Grouply.com: Savior or AntiChrist?
I received the fllowing in emai, and went looking for more information:
Hey, folks, just a warning that the website Grouply.com, claiming to manage all your yahoo groups, is suspect for identity theft and for spreading malicious content to those that share your groups. Please, for your safety and ours, if you get a message about grouply, delete it!! I’ve seen it happen on two of my yahoogroups already, and I’d hate to see any more get hurt by this website.
The caution appears to be worth heeding, although the site is certified by TRUSTe, and on the surface the idea looks good.
However, as noted in Grouply.com: cool free service or evil data miner?, the idea of linking so much personal information into the hands of anyone else is a bad idea…
In order for the service to work, you have to give them your Yahoo!ID and password. All of a sudden, visions of address-book spammers like Quechup come racing to mind, but we’re not talking here about a service using your address book to grow their business. No, it’s a potentially a LOT worse than that. To be honest, I’m not sure the founders of Grouply have thought this through very well.Consider for a moment what information is controlled by your Yahoo! credentials … like all your Flickr photos; your Yahoo!Finance account information; your Yahoo! Security Key; all your Yahoo! profiles and identities; your OpenID key; your home address and telephone number; your Yahoo!Wallet information, even your Yahoo!Auctions account.