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).
