Good morning all,
After reading a cautionary email message in bit.listerv.edtech about a free new service called Grouply, I became intrigued and decided to check it out…
It certainly LOOKS like a legit (and potentially very helpful) web 2.0 application! They’re TRUSTe certified, they got a positive review on TechCrunch, and they even have a FAQ that directly addresses some of the concerns that have been raised on the Internet about them. More importantly, the concept is very powerful; it’s basically a social networking mashup of your Yahoo! and Google Groups, offering to turn your mishmosh of multiple groups into a seamless, single-site experience. But wait, there’s more…
Grouply allows you to get all of your group updates in a single email; consolidates all your group information on a single website; dramatically reduces the size (measured in line counts) of ‘digest’ emails, making them easier and faster to read; allows for cross-group calendaring; tagged searches; dynamic user profiles; and ‘what’s popular’ and ‘who’s active’ functions to keep tabs on hot topics and prolific members of your network. Take the tour yourself. For people who subscribe to and manage a lot of Yahoo! and Google groups, Grouply could be a godsend.
So what’s the problem?
In order for the service to work, you have to give them your Yahoo!ID and password. All of a sudden, visions of address-book spammers like Quechup come racing to mind, but we’re not talking here about a service using your address book to grow their business. No, it’s a potentially a LOT worse than that. To be honest, I’m not sure the founders of Grouply have thought this through very well.
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. Grouply tries to allay fears about potential misuse of your credentials in this part of their FAQ but to anyone with a modicum of concern about their data privacy, this is a HUGE red flag. Doesn’t matter what they say. (Can you say ‘rouge employee?’) Fact is, you’ve given out your password. What happens next?
If all goes well, you’ll enjoy the new service and its cool features. You’ll save time, build your network, and access information more easily. You’ll start leveraging Groups in ways you hadn’t before. It’s all good!
If all DOESN’T go well – and your Yahoo! identity is somehow compromised, despite the ample protections they claim to have in place – what then?
There’s more, though. As I understand it, joining Grouply effectively overrides the privacy and other settings you’ve put in place on Yahoo!Groups you’re managing. Content becomes available, email addresses of subscribers become visible, everything becomes part of the network. For people using Yahoo! Groups as a secure communication area for business or their organization, this could be a problem. I don’t belong to any groups that I wouldn’t write about here, but I have created MANY private groups for clients, colleagues and school associates for projects. I wouldn’t want these private groups’ content brought into the open; that’s why we made ‘em private!
Seriously. I don’t design web applications and I’m not a venture capitalist. I’m certainly no data security expert. Heck, I’m a classroom teacher. I spend my day surrounded by adorable schoolkids in my computer lab. But I’m also a longtime Yahoo! user and someone who knows their way around the web. There’s no way in a million years I’d ever give my Yahoo! credentials to a website like Grouply. Just my choice. Your mileage may vary!
Here’s my question for the founders, who will probably find this blog and hopefully comment.
I’ve seen various web 2.0 services request for “authorization” to use my Yahoo! stuff, like my Flickr photos. This is handled completely differently; I sign into my Yahoo! Account page and securely give applications permission to access my DATA but not my ACCOUNT DETAILS. Big difference. Is there a reason you could not have used a similar approach? *THAT* would make this service a slam-dunk.
To the curious, though, there is a way to try this service. Just create a second Yahoo! identity, and use it only for messaging. Sign up for all your groups again using that identity. It would be kinda inconvenient, but, you could get a sense for the real value of the service without putting anything at risk. What do you think?
I’ll close with this thought. Conceptually, this is an EXTREMELY cool idea. I love the social networking implications and I love saving time. But what about the risks? If you don’t have a lot of personal information tied into your Yahoo! account,by all means, go for it! If you do … I recommend you think twice.
Hope this helps,
-kj-
I think you understand that the service in question had been designed for REAL life and real consumer habbits.
What are those? Simple! Ordinary consumer has:
1. around 30 (on average!) e-mail accounts in free services…
2. …ALL OF THEM (except for one or two, typically the one, given to her/him by the internet provider) have FAKE or ‘inconsistent’ (to say the least) personal data attached to it…
3. … will not ‘register’ in ANY service anymore (90+% bounce rate from any ‘sign-up’ page).
I’m not talking about ‘techies’, I’m talking about the rest 95% of the population.
btw, that’s why the retention rate in more or less ordinary and boring sites like MySpace and Facebook is so high. :)
Regards.
How does Grouply compare with Meebo? (www.meebo.com)
Alex,
Well I’ve got an open mind, but I’m having a hard time following your line of reasoning, can you elaborate? BTW, if you came across a great website offering some terrific features you were interested in, would you provide it with your WoW login credentials? I’m guessing … no. :-) Your Level 70 Hunter is at least as important to me as my Yahoo! Identity…
Marilynn,
Meebo appears to be IM-only but in much the same way wants your login credentials, which, admittedly, represent the same risk. If your IM account is with Yahoo! and you have a lot of information in that profile (I do), then, providing that login is a potential security hole.
-kj-
Thanks, Kevin. Because I’ve used Meebo, I just went and changed all my passwords! I think I’ll just stick with GoogleTalk for now!
Thanks very much! Great review and I appreciate the heads up.
KJ,
I am one of the co-founders of Grouply. Thank you for your level-headed analysis.
I did not want to clear up a couple of points, though. As far as security goes, we carefully protect your Yahoo password – we do not phish or do identity theft. We use it only for discovering your group list and retrieving messages – we will NOT use it for anything else, like your Yahoo email.
People cannot read messages in Grouply unless they are a member of your Yahoo Group. Part of the reason we need your Yahoo ID and password, is that every time you login, we go and check Yahoo Groups to see which groups you have joined and which you have left. Go to http://blog.grouply.com/protect and view the “How does Grouply protect the confidentiality of my group messages?” question. So Grouply does not expose messages to non-members.
Honestly we do not want to have the passwords, but that is the only way now for us to respect the memberships in Yahoo Groups. If Yahoo provides an Yahoo Groups API, we would noy have this issue. We have talked to them about this, but there are no firm timetables. If you have influence with them… ;-) While I prefer not to get the password, there are successful services that use passwords from other websites. Are you familar with meebo? It allows you to use all of your IM accounts from one site (like what Grouply does, but for IM). To do that, you have to store your Yahoo, AOL, MSN, etc. passwords and IDs on their website. They have over 19 million users – any of which could be a member of these groups. Check out mint.com – they aggregrate your financial data. There you store your bank and credit card account passwords and IDs – which is more sensitive than even my Yahoo ID and password, at least for me.
Rich
I agree with the comment regarding multiple email accounts. 99% of my groups and email are quite frankly open the public, government agencies and other commercial enterprises. I have a couple of accounts I use for private matters, conversations with my girlfriend for example,that I would not give the details, not even the address, to anyone or any organisation for any reason whatsoever.
But the ‘egroup’ moderators have taken a hard line on Grouply. To be expected.
Rich,
Thanks for the comment. I totally get what you are saying. The Yahoo!Groups API is your salvation, to be sure. I respect that you and your organization go to great lengths to protect Yahoo! passwords but the bottom line, for me at least, is that is a credential I am unwilling to disclose to anyone for any reason. I am familiar with Meebo, though I don’t use it. Forget mint.com, I’m a Quicken user and I don’t even use THEIR secure service for consolidating financial data. So I am probably a bit more conservative than the average person.
To be fair, all I’d need to do to get the benefit of your service would be to create a new Yahoo!ID separate from my existing one, but as of now I’m just not willing to do so. Your service sounds valuable for those who don’t have a lot of personal and other data tied into their Yahoo!Identity. Good luck to you!
-kj-
Malc,
Thanks for the comment. I do think the service has value but you are right, the exposure it provides private groups is pretty significant.
-kj-
Well, I take it you meant “rogue” (pronounced “rog”, with a long “o”, meaning someone acting on their own) and not “rouge” (pronounced “rooj”, the French word for “red”) in your parenthetical comment, “can you say ‘rouge employee’?”
Other than the typo, all that needs to be said about Grouply is that no one should be so naive or just plain stupid enough to give a complete stranger his or her user name and password for any service–especially one as revealing and potentially extensive as a Yahoo ID.
Personally speaking, there are only two people I trust with such information, and Grouply sure isn’t one of them.
Frankly, people so gullible as to trust a stranger with such information deserves the hard lesson that will surely be learned from such an experience–but, hey, if anyone wants to give me the username and password to access his or her fat bank account, I promise I won’t use it. I’ll just look at it and marvel at how much you trust me.
I think it looks like a marvelous application, once the security issues can be worked out. I’m eager to try it, but will not until I am convinced it is safe. I’m more cautious than most, as I’m a Private Investigator, and Certified Identity Theft Risk Management Specialist.
A couple of things that are slightly OT, but bear mentioning; most of you mention that you would never share your private information with “some company,” and yet I’ll bet that every day you are dealing with people overseas, in places such as India, who are providing “customer service” and “tech support” to you, while looking at WAY more crucial data in many cases, than what you would be providing to Grouply. This is not to say that you should give your info to Grouply (as much as I am tempted), but if you are truly concerned about protecting your data, then why do business with companies that outsource overseas?
If someone steals your identity, or otherwise messes with you, and that person is in the USA, you have at least a slight chance of doing something about it. If that person is overseas, and there have been cases of this, then you don’t have a prayer. Jurisdiction is impossible to deal with in such an situation.
I’m glad to see people being smart and careful with their private information. If you’re not willing to do business with Grouply, then you should not do business with any business that outsources their support, and your information, to foreign countries, where you are completely unprotected.
Another issue is profiling, which is impossible to avoid completely. Grouply looks to be a two edged sword in this department. It appears that it provides you with an excellent profile of yourself and your entire network, which makes it extremely attractive to you, AND to anyone who wants to profile you quickly and effectively. Hmmmmm…..
Hi Vicki,
Thanks for stopping by and sharing your expertise with us.
Not sure I’m seeing the analogy between sharing my Yahoo! password (which allows full access to my email account, all the financial information I’ve tied to my Yahoo! Wallet, including the ability to purchase items and links to my bank accounts, and loads of other data) with providing information to a CSR/tech support person for a company in India. Tell me more. What are you getting at? I’d never give THAT personal information to ANYONE.
You say, “If you’re not willing to do business with Grouply, then you should not do business with any business that outsources their support, and your information, to foreign countries…” Again, I’m just not getting this connection. I do business with MANY firms who do this, but I don’t provide my personal information, beyond of course credit card data that I need for purchasing items, etc.
On the subject of profiling, take a look at my LinkedIn page, which is, for me, the primary service I use for personal branding, beyond what I have and maintain myself on various personal/professional blogs & websites. If someone wants to ‘profile’ me, they are more than welcome. The link above, along with a Google search of my name, will yield plenty of information … but NOT the same kind of PERSONAL information, things that people can use to AUTHENTICATE as me.
So again, thanks for your input, but help me out here, I’m not fully getting what you’re driving at.
-kj-
I’d have to say that the biggest concern here is the discontented employee. Most hacking happens from within. They may provide top-notch security and treat your information with the respect it deserves, but somewhere along the line there has to be a place where an employee of Grouply could get access to that information. (Even if it’s fully encrypted, at the very least the software engineers themselves have the access needed to circumvent whatever security they created.)
Even a mostly content employee with that kind of access would be greatly tempted to create a largish database of user id’s and passwords and burn it to a CD to take home “just in case” they ever have a need for revenge. If Grouply ever lays off any employee who had the ability to do this, or ever does anything to raise the ire of any one these employees, there will be NO surefire way of knowing that they haven’t already taken just such a CD home. Even if they wait a year to use it or sell it to help avoid being caught, there will be plenty of users who haven’t changed their passwords in that time.
That means that a security breach could have already happened, or could happen at any time in the future, and remain totally undetectable for any arbitrary amount of time, and then suddenly rear it’s ugly head long after it has become impossible to ever determine when, how, or where it happened.
That’s a nightmare.
No matter how well-intended Grouply is, if they have employees, then they are taking on a HUGE security liability and I wouldn’t want to be in their shoes. And I ain’t EVER giving them my info.
Instead, they need to work with Yahoo to find an alternative way to grant access to specific data approved by some process involving the user. And if Yahoo isn’t willing to do that, then they need to find another business because it’s only a matter of time before they make headlines with a HUGE security breach.
Wayne
Thanks for commenting, Wayne. Just got this news flash from Mark Robins, Co-founder/CEO at Grouply. Check it out:
Announcing Grouply Social Inbox™
I need to look into this further but it looks like a step in the right direction!
-kj-
The point about disgruntled employees is valid. But what do think the possibility of having a disgruntled employee in the 14,000 people at Yahoo or a small startup like Grouply.
Nevertheless, we have just created a “no-password” option that lets you use Grouply.
Contact me if you would like to find out more.
Rich
Until tonight the only thing I knew about Grouply was that the owners of two Yahoo! Groups to which I belong had been sufficiently conscientious as to establish dummy accounts as members of their groups, joined Grouply under those dummy accounts and found that Grouply was sending messages to the group via the dummy account. This last happened less than 12 hours ago and the warning that the group owner led me to do a search that led to this discussion.
All the messages from my Yahoo! Groups and Google Groups go to my GMail Account. Why would I want to use Grouply?
Just because it seemed like a good idea I have given my hotmail address. I only check that address at work, that address does not have my Yahoo or Google information and it may interest me to read the followup comments.
Jim-
Like virtually all “social” websites — including Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Yahoo Groups itself — Grouply gives you the ability to invite other people to use the service. This feature in Grouply is clearly marked and is completely optional. Grouply *never* sends invitations on your behalf without your consent and without you initiating it yourself.
For more info, please check out blog.grouply.com/protect , or contact us anytime at support@grouply.com .
Mark Robins
CEO, Grouply
In spite of Rich Reimer and Mark Robins assurances, I personally got complains of over 45 members from the several Yahoo groups I belong or manage, about getting spam sent under those members identity as originating from the groups they belong to, and coming from their own e-mail address, the one they used for the membership (the groups never had those messages posted in them to begin with)… I won’t provide more details unless the members I speak of let me to release their information…
But at least, be assured that one has, that’s myself… and I had to delete already about a couple dozen spam-mail messages sent by “myself” to “myself” in the last three weeks, and I am not a member of Grouply… albeit most of the complainers are…
I’ve taken a very hard line on Grouply, and had a whole bunch of other Yahoo Groups Owners in Our ‘Genre’ join with Me in blocking Grouply messages, And Banning Anyone with a Grouply E-Mail account. Quite a few months ago, when I first became aware of the threat of Grouply, I also did not admit Anyone with any E-Mail Address, that began with the letter ‘G’ out of sheer paranoia, because I had read that Grouply was affiliated with Google, and that GMX was a dummy Grouply suffix. Before I drop My stand on these two E-Mail providers, I’d like to clear up this issue, with Folks who more informed. Thank You. Damon Brubaker
In addition to my post, I should tell Mark Robins that the danger is probably not with disgruntled employees of his startup but with hackers taking advantage of his limited experience dealing with their scourge…
@Frank-
You said:
> I personally got complains of over 45 members from the several Yahoo groups I belong or manage, about getting spam sent under those members identity.
It sounds to me that you are saying that 45 people claim that Grouply sent messages on their behalf without their approval. As I mentioned above, Grouply offers a feature similar to the ubiquitous “tell a friend” that allows users to invite others to Grouply. This feature is clearly marked and requires several clicks to complete. We have no record of anyone reporting the issue you are describing. I am happy to personally investigate this. My email address is mark@grouply-inc.com .
You said:
> I had to delete already about a couple dozen spam-mail messages sent by “myself” to “myself” in the last three weeks.
It sounds like what you are saying here is that you are not a Grouply user and that somehow Grouply is sending out spam on your behalf. I can tell you that this is not possible based on how Grouply works today. Please forward the emails in question to me at mark@grouply-inc.com and I will be happy to investigate.
If there is anyone out there who has a Grouply issue to report, I invite you to contact us at support@grouply.com or contact me directly at mark@grouply-inc.com . We have earned a reputation for being extremely responsive. Plus my guess is that Kevin would rather that his blog not become a Grouply tech support site!
Thanks.
Mark
@Damon-
Yes, we certainly respect the right of group owners to decide what’s best for their groups. This is why Grouply offers group owners the ability to block their group messages from being sent to Grouply.
By the way, Damon, I notice that you posted recently about Grouply on yahoo_group_of_groups, which is one of the “groups about Yahoo groups” that Yahoo points users to for assistance. All of the moderators of these groups are well aware of Grouply, and many have done their own very thorough research on Grouply, which they have reported back to their groups. So if anyone out there is looking for unbiased opinions on Grouply from Yahoo Groups experts, please join one of these groups. Or you can join the GrouplyImprovements Yahoo Group, which was formed several months ago by these same moderators specifically to work with us to identify and help prioritize new Grouply features to address the needs of group owners.
Mark
All: for a direct link to the user support Yahoo Group Mark mentions above, click here.
I gotan email from someone this AM saying “Oh I share this with you please go to Grouply and check out my profile. I can’t do that without logging in.
I was freaked out a bit when I read their terms and thefact they they said there were things I could not opt out of. This rattled me a lot. When I read it it looks like some lawyer’s attempt to create a blombproof “Well you signed away your privacy rights, so what are you crying about.” I wrote back saying that I wanted this person to provide me more information that they are real and my grumbles about grouply.
To me it just doesn’t seem worth it….I mean if people want to social network one can use Myspace or some other service that is less invasive. Other than the friends requests from advertizers I have had no trouble with them or with the Rap Music things my friends kids got me into. Other than I think if I ever showed a party of those folks I’d be a total freak in the oldstyle.;)
Have Fun,
Sends Steve
Hi, Steve-
Thanks for your feedback. We modeled the Grouply Terms of Service on the TOS of Yahoo, Facebook, MySpace, and other “social” sites. We tried hard not to put anything in there that was unusual. However, if there are some specific terms that you think are “too much” I’d be happy to take a look at them. You can contact me at mark@grouply-inc.com .
You compared Grouply to MySpace, and I agree that there are many similarities. The big difference, though, is that Grouply works automatically with the online groups you already belong to on systems like Yahoo Groups. When you join MySpace, you are starting your social networks all over again from scratch.
I’m not sure what you mean when you say that MySpace is “less invasive” than Grouply. As has been discussed above, you no longer need to provide your Yahoo password to use Grouply, so you are protected there if that is a concern. And if anything, Grouply offers *more* privacy controls than MySpace. For example, on Grouply you can selectively expose your contact info to some people and not others, and you can remove one or more of your groups from displaying in your group list. On MySpace, all of that info is “all or nothing”. If you enter it, than anyone who can see your profile — which is usually *everyone* — can see it. Many people aren’t aware of this and wind up displaying their contact info to the world.
I’d be happy to discuss any of this with you if you like. Again, my contact info is mark@grouply-inc.com . Thanks again for the feedback.
Mark
I wont give my yahoo password to my mother why should i give it to a complete stranger/group?
beingsneaky, you don’t have to. :-) They changed how the service works. See above… :)
i go to grouply sign up page and it still ask me for my yahoo user name and password
beingsneaky-
Your Yahoo username and password are optional. If you are not comfortable providing them, you can just leave those fields blank. The setup process will take you a few minutes longer, but Grouply should work fine for you. Please feel free to shoot me an email at mark@grouply-inc.com if you experience any issues.
Mark
I’m curious to know whether the issues discussed here are just in relation to grouply and yahoo or other services such as http://www.atomkeep.com which currently enable users to submit username/ passwords for 44 different sites.
Q1. Is the issue that yahoo stores confidential information beyond group messages which is stopping users from signing up?
Q2. Would you submit username/ passwords for other sites if it were only group messages associated with these credentials?
friendfeed asks users for credentials and there’s an avalanche of users.
I am a Yahoo Group owner. Yesterday, we had a situation in my group in which an email was sent to the group … it looked like it had been sent by one of our members, but it was sent out by Grouply without her knowledge.
I’ve read above that one of the co-founders of Grouply said that they don’t do that unless the person follows a few links … a detailed process … to invite others. I beg to differ. Here is what our group member had to say about the whole thing:
“I feel like I owe you all an explanation an apology. I was sent an email by someone asking me to look at some of their art work. It was a one on one email not a group email sent to me on my email account through yahoo.
”It was a string of letters and numbers sort of like when you click on a post that someone has added a photo to a album. When I clicked on it
it took me to another page. I exited immediately. About a minute later I got a welcome email to grouply asking me to set up my
profile. I knew them something was wrong.
“Then a friend emailed me and said she had gotten the bogus email from me. I contacted yahoo by email then called their service techs. Then called my ex who is a computer guru
for a bunch of computer companies and they all went to work.
“As soon as I changed my passwords the emails stopped. My ex changed my IPO address and ran a new firewall through my computer. I have
changed all my passwords and deleted any sent messages and address books. I put those on my other computer and changed everything there
also. My ex put a dragon fighter for any spam and phishing on …so hopefully I am good to go.
“I was lucky because I know someone who could help me immediately, and knew who to talk to. It still took a few hours to get things done.
“In short, a nightmare.
I want to apologize to all. I would never send out a email like this. I do not even pass on jokes etc on my private email address. I work on my blog, read other blogs, admire all your great art work
and work in my studio when I am not taking care of the ones I love. Please know until today I had never heard of grouply.
That’s the end of her email apology to the group. It doesn’t seem to me that she knowingly followed several links to knowingly allow Grouply to send out solicitation emails on her behalf.
I’d be interested to know what Rich and Mark and the other Grouply co-founders think of this.
Teri, as I mentioned above, Grouply — like many other sites — gives users the option to invite others to join. This is completely optional for the user, and the steps to send invitations are clearly marked and require several clicks. Grouply *does not* send out any emails or invitations of any sort without the user initiating it.
If I’m reading your description correctly, your group member – having never registered for Grouply – clicked a link in an email, which resulted in invitations to Grouply getting sent out on their behalf. I can assure you that Grouply doesn’t work this way. In fact, I’m not aware that this is even technically possible. However, I would be happy to speak with you or your group member to understand this better and investigate if you like. You can contact me at mark@grouply-inc.com.
Mark
I just received an invitation from someone to join Grouply. I went to the site and thought it might be interesting. But ‘ding ding’ warning bells went off as soon as I saw it asking me for my Yahoo password. Whether this is safe or not there are too many bogus versions of this for people to be satisfied. I tried to register without yahoo info and it wouldn’t take it. The whole thing felt very very intrusive – whether it is or not. And I am not a super privacy oriented person.
Now I see that there is a special link here where Yahoo ID is not needed but no way am I going to take this chance. And I am going to send this post to everyone I know as soon as they send me a Grouply invitation.
I am sure that you are fine at the top. But screw ups happen at all levels in a business. It’s bad enough that Yahoo has my info. That’s where I stop.
If the Yahoo password is not really needed then it is time to take out the request for the password from the first page so that people don’t get the ‘what the hell is this’ reaction that I had.
GG
Forget it. Grouply hides the fact that it’s the origin of the invites. No Grouply address appears in the From: field. no Grouply address appears in the headers. The messages, according to the headers, are generated by the Yahoo Message poster (the ones I’ve gotten from Yahoo groups), and the only addresses traceable are from Yahoo.
Dishonest. Forging of headers. Spoofing addresses. All of this adds up to one thing:
Stay the hell away from Grouply.
GG-
As has been mentioned, providing your Yahoo password to Grouply is completely optional. You can leave that field blank if you want when you register, and Grouply will then lead you through the process of manually “connecting” your Grouply account to your Yahoo Groups. It sounds like you had an issue when you registered. Please contact me at mark@grouply-inc.com and I will be happy to investigate this for you.
Ultimately, we want to have as many people as possible successfully using and enjoying Grouply. We have played around with various different designs for our registration and account setup process, and we have found that designs where we give users the option to provide their Yahoo information on the first page produce the most satisfied and successful users.
We realize that some users may have a negative reaction to this and may not register as a result. This is, of course, their decision. We hope you will give Grouply a try.
Mark
JC-
Grouply does not send the invitations – the user does. So the invitation, appropriately, appears to the recipient as coming “from” the person who sent it. This is exactly the same way invitations work on major social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and others. Grouply is no different.
Happy to discuss this with you further if you like. You can contact me at mark@grouply-inc.com.
Mark
I have a question, and it is the main point of contention for me. Why must I, as a yahoo group moderator, JOIN grouply in order to ensure that my group’s files aren’t shared. Sorry, but any service that makes me join them in order to turn them off is really just lookng for me to join them. So I suspended privliedges for all other group moderators, one of which opted in in order to opt us out. There’s something quite fishy about needing to sign in to sign out.
passwords aside, that’s just wrong.
I just got told that someone recieved an invite from me. People that know me know that would never happen. I think that this grouply thing is a big scam just aimed to rip off a bunch of people in the future. I have never jopined grouply and never intend to. If I find that they have any of my info I will see what recourse I have in court. I have also recieved invites to other sites but it had their headers and in the subject line I was informed that it was sent on behalf of the person that wanted me to get the invite. To me when an online business uses a persons email info in the headers something is very wrong and maybe illegal somewhere in that business. I also searched grouply to see if I could find out if I was listed there and I couldn’t find out any way to do this. The email addy I used for this and that I use for all my yahoo groups is only used to take out the spammers and other email harvestors. I only allow trusted people to have my yahoo email addy. These are people that have enough common sense to send me a separate email telling me about a group that they think I might be interested in and not useing an invite feature at some off the wall bunch of idiots site.
Joe
We’re having all kinds of issues with these spam “invites” on our Yahoo lists right now. Mark, not buying your explanation about “users sending the invites”. This has NOT been the case on 3 separate instances on my lists, as Joe has mentioned, above. All three people have stated that they have been told that they sent out an invite to join grouply.com, and none of them are grouply.com members. This sounds like a spoofing/phishing program to me. We have one list member extremely upset and in tears over this, as she has been accused very unfairly of sending out these emails. Mark, care to elaborate on this?
Patty
Yeah, Mark, and that “it’s an easier and more pleasant experience for people if we give them the OPPORTUNITY to give us their Yahoo passwords on the opening page” comment is bull. You do that to try to snare as many passwords as possible, from uninformed & trusting people. In my line of work I’ve learned that the best scam artists always are reasonable and friendly. The problem is that no matter what you say, the problems continue to multiply. All my groups forbid Grouply members, and will continue to.
Sheila-
Grouply gives group owners the ability to block their groups from Grouply if they want, and they don’t need to register with Grouply or provide any personal information to do it. You can find more information at http://blog.grouply.com/protect .
Mark
Hi folks,
This conversation has for the most part been very civil and professional, especially on Mark Robins’ side of the aisle. I have to say however that I am a little concerned by use of terms like ‘scam’ and indirect accusations of Grouply being a ‘phishing’ or ‘spoofing’ site. You’re all 1,000% entitled to your opinions, but I’m 1,000% responsible for what appears on my blog, so, I’m writing to ask all of you to continue this conversation using any of these alternative venues:
1) http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/grouplyimprovements/
2) http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/grouply-users-group/
3) http://blog.grouply.com/grouply-31/ (or any blog post there actually)
4) Mark via email directly: support@grouply.com
Please understand, I think it’s cool as heck that my blog comes up as the #2 hit (currently at least) when you Google ‘Grouply’ . As an aspiring blogger hoping to build readership, the LAST thing I want to do is SEND PEOPLE AWAY. However, I honestly think everyone would be better served by taking this convo to another location. Heck, just browsing the content of the first Yahoo! group above, there are a ton of people offering their own experiences and opinions. And while I don’t feel the Yahoo!Groups UI is all that conducive to threaded conversations, it’s probably the best option at the moment.
Bottom line, Stay in the conversation, we will all benefit! The truth is out there! I’d just like to see this continue where it will have maximum value for the community as a whole, (and, not drag this poor unsuspecting elementary schoolteacher blogger into a potential legal abyss.) ;-)
Keep on keepin’ on, folks!
-kj-
Hi again folks,
I’ve received some email over the past couple of days related to this thread and my decision to close the comments. Thanks for writing! I decided to contact some friends and colleagues who I admire and respect and who happen to be authorities on technology and protected speech in the blogosphere. Turns out I may be overreacting by closing the comments, but in my world, ‘err on the side of caution’ is not just a trite expression. It’s what I think is best to do in this case, and since I’m the owner of the blog, I get to make that call.
I’ve been open and helpful towards everyone who emailed me directly about this post and the comments since I originally wrote the entry. This includes individual users as well as Mark from Grouply himself. For the record, he didn’t ask me to close the comment stream. But, when he sent me a request to remove these three comments:
… because he felt they were the only ones he’d consider “slanderous,” I knew things were getting out of hand. That’s when I went to my friends for their opinion and help. One of them, Miguel Guhlin chimes in here.
For the record, Mark has since retracted his request. I think it’s important to get that out there, too. I feel badly enough about stopping the comments on this thread. But, deleting stuff? Sorry, not happening…
So where can this conversation continue, in an OPEN, PUBLIC forum? Some folks don’t want to sign up for a Yahoo!Groups account, and I can understand that. So I did a little digging and found this post on TechCrunch that should do nicely:
Grouply Brings A Bit Of Facebook To Yahoo/Google Groups
It’s a little dated, but as you will see, Mark has already commented there. In my view, TechCrunch is a far more suitable place for this discussion. I hate to ask you folks to re-enter your comments in THAT thread but I’d be forever in your debt if you would.
I’m looking forward to seeing the conversation continue … just elsewhere, and ideally, on TechCrunch. :) For now, I’m moving on to other subjects, leaving the comments and responses here as a testament to the authentic discourse possible in the blogosphere. I hope you all understand where I am coming from. Thanks everyone!
All the best,
-kj-
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