Grouply
What is Grouply?
According to Wikipedia, Grouply is a free online service that, like Ning, provides specialized (vertical) social networks.
It seems that Grouply is trying to build a member list by offering members something called a 'Social Inbox'. Since I have not joined Grouply and have no intentions of doing so, I am not quite sure what a Social Inbox may be. It sounds like an open invitation for folks to read my email!
It sounds attractive to the un-initiated. If they belong to several Yahoo Groups they can get them all on one web page.
From Grouply:
"Grouply automatically and instantly upgrades all of your Yahoo Groups into engaging social networks."
To reassure users their messages are private:
"But don’t worry, group messages in Grouply are never visible to those outside the group, and Grouply includes a powerful set of privacy controls so you can determine precisely who can see what on your profile page."
Most of the serious Yahoo Groups members have their messages downloaded into various email clients and a web page is not necessary to get our messages.
But how does this work? Well to start, a member has to provide some way for Grouply to access the messages, which means the member generally provides a User ID and password to Grouply. (If they think I would do this, they are nuts!)
This is in violation of Yahoo's Terms of Service. (TOS) The TOS states you must keep your user id and password confidential. See Section 5.
According to Grouply's site Yahoo has issued clarification regarding password security and third-party websites. Grouply welcomes these clarifications from Yahoo, as they reaffirm Grouply’s compliance with Yahoo’s Terms of Service and Groups Guidelines.
However, Yahoo has actually reaffirmed the requirement to keep User ids and passwords confidential and the dangers involved by not doing so.
I post messages to a number of Yahoo Groups. These posts are intended for the members of the Groups, not to everyone who joins Grouply and decides to invite all of the other members to view their messages. Another security issue as far as I am concerned!
There are many social networks on the web, including the most popular, Facebook. They do serve a purpose and I do have a Facebook account. One feature all of these social networks have is the option to send invitations to 'everyone'. (I skipped that!)
The fact is, Grouply also wants your Yahoo ID and password! They say they don't. but how else do they get access to all of your Yahoo Groups messages? Are they using a 'hack' to do so?