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New Messenger Has Same Old, Gaping Privacy Holes
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft released the beta of the new 'Wave 4' Windows Live Essentials last week. The new beta of Windows Live Messenger 2011, while plugging some privacy holes and shoring up the user interface, fails to tackle the one biggest privacy-buster of all. Say you use Messenger to IM your wife. You also use Messenger to IM your old girlfriend. The next time your wife logs on to her Hotmail account — not Messenger, Hotmail — she will see that you and your old girlfriend 'are now friends.' It all happens without your knowledge or permission, and it happens even if you tell Messenger you want your personal information to be 'Private.'"
..we can all relate to
I understand the privacy implications, but maybe they could have chosen a better example.
If your Wife has some huge issue with you talking to your Ex-girlfriend, there are probably other underlying things.
Communication should be open, like this:
"Oo, she has a nice ass"
[girlfriend turns]
"yeah, you're right"
so it's like facebook?
Normal don't make it right.
All the lack of privacy and cliquishness of the tiny little towns that people ran like hell to the big city to avoid; but with the systematic asymmetry of information that only modern technocratic corporatism can provide... Just lovely.
What about MSNs lack of even simple encryption? I don't know how many times I've seen people snoop on other peoples conversations over wireless...
Gaping Privacy Holes
while plugging some privacy holes
your wife
your old girlfriend....... your wife's logs
she will see that you and your old girlfriend 'are now friends.
you want your...... 'Private.'"
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
Aka, "Just because Facebook does it, doesn't make it right."
"I'd just like to emphasise that taking a million years isn't a metaphor here..." -Rich Bradshaw
You can untag yourself in a facebook photo, you can unfriend someone so they can't tag you, etc. With this, there are no options. Facebook isn't exactly the golden standard of user-controlled privacy settings, but it's better than this.
I would LOVE for facebook to have a privacy option "Disable the ability to tag me in any photo"
Like the privacy setting entitled "Photos and videos I'm tagged in", which can be customized to Only Me or blocked from specific people?
I can't swear that it works properly. So test with someone other than your mistress first :)
Where is the option to mod the whole story as overrated/troll. Sigh
Hang on a second here. Did you just point out that MSN works kind of like Facebook, and then insinuate that this means the privacy is fine?
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
So basically it's like what Google did with Buzz and Gmail contacts. You didn't learn from others' mistakes on this one did you Microsoft?
Can't you turn this off in the Windows Live privacy settings (not the Live Messenger privacy settings)?
Microsoft Messenger? Oh you mean that thing i don't have installed on this computer? The thing i specifically removed from the silent install disc i made?
Relevancy is best seen from the view outside the basement.
Messenger has 330 million users and is available in 50 languages. Windows Live Messenger
It seems that when I dated women who were suspicious, they were often the ones most likely to cheat, and somehow the ones that always had some personal justification for me.
I'd talk to another girl, or maybe an ex, I must be into her, *even* if I notably ensured said ex knew I was in a happy relationship. Then the jealous GF would assume that because - in her mind - I was a cheater, it was OK to go and hit on other guys online (and in the last case, actually managed to be seeing another guy behind my back for months while STILL accusing me).
Screw that BS. If you can't trust your partner, and/or your partner can't trust you, then you probably aren't meant to be together.
Now in terms of the "nice ass" comment, that doesn't mean that as the relationship goes on you should neglect your GF. Don't stop giving compliments or doing nice things just because you've been together awhile... it's a failing many have past the "honeymoon phase".
Facebook is a social interaction system. IM is a communication system. They have entirely different expectations of privacy and function. It's really not that difficult to draw distinction between them and what functions should cross over and which should not.
I think the bigger point here is that MSN is a crappy IM system trying to be a crappy social network. Neither of those things is terribly useful, so don't use it. Problem solved.
Privacy != Security, they're two different concepts, though they do have some inter-relation. Like when Privacy friends Security and Secrecy gets mad.
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
Here's how it would go.
"Do you still talk to your old girlfriends?"
"No, not really. Why do you ask?"
"LIAR! I saw that MSN notification. Why are you still talking to them?"
"I'm not 'talking to them.' My ex added me to her friend's list."
"So you ARE 'talking to them.'"
"I haven't talked to her in over a year."
"But it says you're friends with her! You have to talk to someone to be friends with them!"
"No you don't..all they have to do is add you!"
"If you think I'm stupid, you're WRONG."
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
I'd go so far as to say that if Facebook does it, it's probably wrong.
End of Line.