On Sun, 08 Jun 2008, Sarad AV wrote: > I don't see why gmail should be seen as evil if they are willing > to release account information on subpoena. without it, they are > not even permitted to operate in the country.
I think you missed some other points which are still bad. On Sun, 8 Jun 2008, Akarsh Simha wrote: > These are automated invitations and the Facebook folks force you to > give them your GMail password and flood everyone with invites. This in itself is bad. > They promise to resepct your privacy, though. IIUC, they maintain > the right to use your information as they please The basic issue is that of controlling your own data in unequal relationships. All these are community built sites --- without the large community of users they would be nothing. This even applies to gmail. So it is wrong to think (as many people do) that they are providing a "free" service. Their service is built out of the large number of people who have invested their time and data into it. The contract between them and the users is that they say "we will not use your data in a bad way"; and so far they seem to have abided by that contract in the view of most of their users. However, it _is_ an unequal relationship. As soon as you loose connectivity to the service, they have your data and you have ... nothing! That is, unless you regularly backup all _your_ data from gmail to a local disk. Regards, Kapil. -- _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe <password> <address>" in the subject or body of the message. http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc
