Stay away from Grouply
There’s a site/service called Grouply that is purported to help you manage all your Yahoo groups in a centralized place. Sounds good, right? Especially if you have a lot of group memberships.
But rumors abound about Grouply and how it operates. Some reports are that when you sign up for it, it changes all your membership emails to be username@grouply.com and then any mail in the groups you subscribe to are indexed and resourced by Grouply. This means that anyone else on those groups has, without their permission, had their assumed privacy removed.
Now, everyone should realize that there is no real privacy on the web. None. And the memory of the web is pretty darned infinite. But we’ll ignore the fact that illusions of privacy are just that.
But my most basic issue with Grouply is very simple – it requires you to disclose your Yahoo username and password to a third party service. At that point, you’ve lost all control. You have no idea what, how or when the third party will use that information. You certainly have no control over it.
So the basic security advice applies. Never give out your username and password.
Tags: grouply, user beware
October 20th, 2010 at 2:25 pm
Well, all you have to do is NOT give out your Yahoo or Google groups access info. The access info is NOT required to set up a grouply SNS. You can just use grouply as a social network… as a great Ning replacement for example.
October 20th, 2010 at 6:28 pm
We’ll have to agree to disagree on that. Any site that, in order to fulfill its (at least at the time) advertised purpose, requires you to disclose your login or other information is a basic security risk. Whether you choose to take that risk is, of course, up to you. Just be aware of the risk and be willing to accept the potential issues that arise. In the light of all the Facebook application viruses, it’s good to know who you have given permission to.
Nice artwork, by the way – I like your site.
October 21st, 2010 at 12:55 am
Thank you for the kinds words about my artwork!
Agreed 100% – Never give out your access information. Clearly that presents a great risk. The web never(?) forgets, and the Grouply rumors last. But they are no longer true.
Grouply no longer requires that you do so … Yes, they did in 2008. No, they do not now… The first model was as a groups aggregator, an RSS feed for groups. They needed access info to do that. Obviously it was a bad business idea – since it required information people simply should not give up. If you do not give up the info, you can use Grouply as a social network without any security risk. Grouply can not change any email ids if you don’t give them the access info. So, as you say, taking the risk is entirely up to you.
Now they are a very good alternative to Ning. And since some times — educational environments for instance — we may want to separate the friends & family aspects of FB from a classroom SNS — Ning WAS great for classes. That’s no longer true because they have a tiered pricing model that leaves much to be desired for my class SNS needs. SO after a long search, Grouply seems like the best alternative because their premium service is free for educational uses — AS long as you do not give up access information (Lesson #1 in online literacy! And teaching internet literacy IS part of integrating internet technology in the classroom.)