Comments on: Private Private

By: Peter

Peter — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 21:51:25 +0000

I’ve read some of the FE comments now, and can hardly believe what I’m seeing. An urge to constantly tell people where you are strikes me as the desperate measure of someone who has no interesting features whatever. Devoid of any personality, they’re reduced to screaming, “Look where I am!” the whole live-long day.

Twitter is borderline idiotic… this one goes the whole hog. Afraid I agree with all the naysayers above.

I’m sticking to blogging. At least there’s some creativity, some skill involved.

By: Peter

Peter — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 21:41:18 +0000

What exactly is the point of everyone knowing where everyone else is? Times I feel very thick. Even kids need some space to grow up away from parental eyes. And if married people always knew where their spouses were then I wouldn’t have had a sex life. Called privacy.

Anyway, Gordon – I do love the way you bring these things to us. I’m sure I first read of Flickr here. Now that IS a great app

By: Lyle

Lyle — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 14:03:41 +0000

“Most things have an OFF switch”

In reality, no, they don’t.

Even “unsubscribe” or “leave” options usually mean that you’ve left your data on the server somewhere. It’s just that you can’t get to it any more.

It’s *incredibly* rare for any company (on or offline) to actually delete a customer’s data when they say they want to leave the company, and not use their services any more.

So no, even if I were to sign up for [xyz] service, then decide it’s shit, sign out or ‘leave’, my username and password are still there, along with any data I uploaded at the time.

Yes, sure, it’s all about opting in. But – and this is always my reservation – when I want to opt back out, I should be allowed to do so, and not to leave behind any data. Leaving/Quitting the service should be just that – if I decide to opt back in again at some point in the future, I should have to go through the registration process clean – not to type in “lyle@d4d.co.uk” as my email address, only to be told “That’s already in our system”.

By: Blue Witch

Blue Witch — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 07:10:46 +0000

Ah ah! Adrian Mc has come to the same conclusion that I did at some point last night when I was pondering this some more.

My unease is simply where this will lead in the future.

Look at how many small useful things are now mainstream/forced on one if one wants other things – often becuase small company is bought out by a Giant. I do worry about data on individuals being amassed by the likes of Google and Yahoo and connected corporations (who then offer it to the governmint – look at what Te$£o is doing with Clubcard info).

Why do they need it? If they don’t need it, why are they storing it as individually identifiable data?

Also, others using it around where one is will make more and more noise pollution as these things seem not to be able to do their stuff quietly. Beep beep beep.

It’s not a case of if one doesn’t like it, or see a need for it, then don’t use it, the chances are it is the future and we will all be assimmilated.

By: Adrian McEwen

Adrian McEwen — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 23:35:01 +0000

So the reason it’s all okay is because only techie people can jump through the hoops to make it work, and they’ll have understood the implications?

I’m not convinced that all the techie users will have understood the implications, but even if I grant you that…

What happens next year when the service is improved and it doesn’t need all those steps?