I can only assume I am late on the news, as this past week was the first I heard about Grouply.com. I read a warning about the site from one of my Yahoo Groups a few days ago, then today received an invitation from someone claiming to be from one of my Yahoo Groups inviting me to Grouply. Since I wasn’t entirely sure what the story was, and I wanted to find out for my own benefit as well as to pass along anything I learned, I started some simple research. I started with Snopes but came up empty after searching there. Google search did land me on a Snopes Message Board entry though. The best source of info I’ve found so far is a write up at NCS Tech. I won’t repeat the post, but I do want to point out something important that was noted (be sure to check out the entire post & comments over there - lots of good info) if you do fork over that Yahoo password:
Consider for a moment what information is controlled by your Yahoo! credentials … like all your Flickr photos; your Yahoo!Finance account information; your Yahoo! Security Key; all your Yahoo! profiles and identities; your OpenID key; your home address and telephone number; your Yahoo!Wallet information, even your Yahoo!Auctions account. Yep. Once you’ve given out your password, they have access to all of that, regardless if they have NO INTENTIONS WHATSOEVER of using it.
If you follow the comments on that post, you’ll notice that the IM-only (?) service Meebo also uses your passwords and CAN potentially access any info associated with your Instant Messenger application(s). Also in comments is a response from one of the founders of Grouply and he admits that they do infact store your Yahoo user ID and password.
So…. Do you use Grouply? Have you done your own research on this issue? This is still new to me and I am not willing to hand over my Yahoo ID & password, just to read group mail through their service, but I would be interested in what others think and where y’all stand on this issue and service.
~ Christy
————————————————————————–
Just a note if you haven’t been reading the blog… a HUGE launch party is in the works when the blog moves around mid-month or so with over 40 GIVEAWAYS!! Keep checking back or add the blog to your reader (or sub to email updates) so you don’t miss the announcement!
————————————————————————–
Just a note if you haven’t been reading the blog… a HUGE launch party is in the works when the blog moves around mid-month or so with over 40 GIVEAWAYS!! Keep checking back or add the blog to your reader (or sub to email updates) so you don’t miss the announcement!
————————————————————————–
Hi Christy!
I would point you and your readers to this press release from Grouply:
http://blog.grouply.com/grouply-social-inbox/
As you can see, a Yahoo!ID is no longer necessary to use the service. To be honest, I haven’t had a chance to look into Grouply too closely, but hope to this summer.
Conceptually, I love the idea of consolidated social networking, but I won’t bite until I’m sure there aren’t any negative privacy implications (as I’m sure everyone else will too).
-kj-
Thanks, Kevin!
Thanks for the posting on Grouply, Christy. We have made a huge number of improvements to Grouply over the last six months in response to user feedback. As Kevin mentioned, your Yahoo password is no longer required to use Grouply – you can just leave that field blank when you register.
Nothing is more important to us than the privacy of our users. We take great care in protecting your information, and we offer extensive privacy settings, so you can control at a very granular level what information about you is shared with others. If you have any concerns about privacy or anything else related to Grouply, please check out http://blog.grouply.com/protect/ or feel free to contact me directly at mark@grouply-inc.com .
We look forward to welcoming you and your readers to Grouply!
Mark Robins
CEO, Grouply
Thank you for responding Mark. I think I’ll hold off for now.
Christy
I am on the ra-factor yahoo group, which is a group for people with various autoimmune diseases. The issue of grouply apparently came up once before, and now has surfaced again on this and several other groups of which I am a member.
Apparently, grouply, or members of it, have found a way to steal identities of some people who give out information to the service. I would normally discount such things as made up drivvle, but I know some of the people to who this has happened personally, *not just on the net*, and I know that what they are going through, right now, with yahoo, is very real. I am sorry that it happened to them, but…Stupid, stupid for giving their ID and password out to anyone! Even if they just gave out their ID… Still, stupid.
I even received a link from someone claiming to be in the group, ra-factor who wanted me to join grouply. I found this odd, since I had never heard of the individual, nor had he ever sent me any messages via yahoo messenger or email. I didn’t even click the link, nor do I have any desire to do so.
Mr Robins -
Today, someone sent me a grouply invitation.
I clicked on the link provided and was taken to a grouply registration page.
The registration form has a field for ‘Yahoo Password’. This field is not marked ‘Optional’. Based on your comments from last July, I assume that this is a bug and that you will want to urgently correct this by having the word ‘Optional’ added next to the ‘Yahoo Password’ field.