[Sigia-l] Social Networks and Social Responsibility [was] Tagged: Malicious Social Network

[Alexander Johannesen]

On 4/25/07, Livia Labate <liv at livlab.com> wrote:
> Maybe I'm missing something, but I dont' think neither of these sites
> (good or bad) are asking the password to your email. they are asking you
> for the password to login to the site.

No, they certainly ask you for that. The reason is that under the
covers their social connections often are done through third-party
systems, such as gmail, yahoo mail, or other social networks. Some do
this to make it easier to connect to others, some do it to harvest
users "accidentally", and so forth.

As an example, a boss of mine, who's clued in and technologically
up-to-date sent out an "invite" to all of her contacts in her gmail
account, including mailing-lists, her bosses and other contacts
(including me). The invite was written so it looked like she endorsed
that perticular social network, yet all she did was trying to sign up
to try it out. In fact, I signed up to it based on her
"recomendation", but I was a bit more catious during the process and
noticed the sneaky way they asked for certain things. I went to my
boss and she was quite upset about it and explained what happened. It
was a slight oversight on her part, but with a huge consequence. I can
understand how it happened, and it is a really bad practice.


Alex
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