[arch-general] Robson Peixoto invited you to Dropbox

[Ng Oon-Ee]

On Mon, 2011-01-24 at 10:36 +0000, Peter Lewis wrote:
> On Monday 24 January 2011 10:19:02 Ng Oon-Ee wrote:
> > On Mon, 2011-01-24 at 10:12 +0000, Peter Lewis wrote:
> > > <dropbox email invitation>
> > > 
> > > On Monday 24 January 2011 10:06:18 Ray Rashif wrote:
> > > > Guys..I don't think anyone has to tell you this but such invites are
> > > > _always_ unintended. E-mail services have a bad tendency to
> > > > automatically insert contacts into your friends' list, mailing list or
> > > > not. So please, ignore e-mails like this and keep them reply-free in
> > > > the future, so that they may just annoy people _once_.
> > > 
> > > Call me a noob, but I don't understand why these emails get sent. I've
> > > seen a few of them around on email lists. It seems to be that either
> > > someone uploads their entire addressbook to a random website (doesn't
> > > seem like a clever idea) or else gives the website their email password
> > > (very bad idea).
> > > 
> > > What gives?
> > 
> > Plenty of the more 'social'-orientated websites are linked in to the
> > popular free emails (gmail especially). You don't give your password to
> > the website itself, it just asks for permission to do something with
> > your contact list (normally spam an invite to itself to everyone there).
> > As I understand it, the website never even sees your addressbook, just
> > uses the google-created api to send an email to everyone in it.
> 
> Ah, I see. Not using any webmail system I suppose I've never encountered this. 
> I tend to think at least twice before letting something connect to my twitter 
> account! ;-)
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> Pete.

You're welcome. Unfortunately, that's the way the web works nowadays.

Also, at least in dropbox's case I did not remember them allowing
selection of emails, its mainly all-or-nothing (which makes sense
considering the size of the average gmail user's contact list with its
auto-population crap).