New Messenger Has Same Old, Gaping Privacy Holes 287
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft released the beta of the new 'Wave 4' Windows Live Essentials last week. The new beta of Windows Live Messenger 2011, while plugging some privacy holes and shoring up the user interface, fails to tackle the one biggest privacy-buster of all. Say you use Messenger to IM your wife. You also use Messenger to IM your old girlfriend. The next time your wife logs on to her Hotmail account — not Messenger, Hotmail — she will see that you and your old girlfriend 'are now friends.' It all happens without your knowledge or permission, and it happens even if you tell Messenger you want your personal information to be 'Private.'"
Thats the biggest security hole? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Open communication? (Score:2, Interesting)
She can't bitch at you while her mouth is full, duh. :p
Re:Open communication? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Thanks for providing a real world example.. (Score:1, Interesting)
I detest examples such as this. They imply that you only need privacy if you're doing something wrong. Why not use one where a person is friends with both a fundamentalist christian and a well-known atheist, or a homosexual and a homophobe?
Your example is just as bad. Because why would anyone befriend a homophobe in this day and age? Or even worse, the fundamentalist christian.
Re:Deja Vu (Score:2, Interesting)
So basically it's like what Google did with Buzz and Gmail contacts. You didn't learn from others' mistakes on this one did you Microsoft?
Yahoo has a Buzz competitor too. [yahoo.com] Windows Live/Hotmail, Google and Yahoo! Pulse's biggest downside is that none of them force people to use their real full names, so you can't expand your network with long-lost acquaintances.
The new players still protect our privacy, but hinder people's being found: obfuscated URLs, hiding your name, sex location and relative age; not being indexed at the very top of Google's searches have killed their shine in light of the big social networks.
For 3 years I slowly noticed Google, MS Live and Yahoo integrating chat, social information, avatars, new blogs, photo albums, status update broadcasts and crap mindful of dating sites. None of that has forced my friends, already deep in FB, to UPDATE their pre-Facebook site profiles using the new tools in their hands.
(*) Funny that Facebook, in spite of all its privacy controversy, is so correct about e-mail address disclosure. I applaud their hiding your valuable e-mail address from the friend request process. Thus, people who are out of touch with you can attempt to contact you --and if things go wrong, you can unfriend them without worrying that in the process of finding you they would learn handles allowing them to bug you over Gmail / Hotmail and Yahoo chat until you personally accept them at a more serious level.