Whitney Hess, UX Coach - Latest Comments in How Bebo Ruined My Life

Re: How Bebo Ruined My Life

Emily — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 00:24:43 -0000

Several years behind in reading this, but I can relate so very much! It's happened to me before on LinkedIn. It was so embarrassing. I just ducked my head for a few days and waited it out. I totally blame LinkedIn, too. Misleading button hierarchy. Ugh.

Re: How Bebo Ruined My Life

Kat — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 10:36:53 -0000

I just found in my google account that bebo.com had access to my gmail account. I have no idea who they are and how they got that access. I have denied access....now. They should be sued.

Re: How Bebo Ruined My Life

Whitney Hess — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 10:35:03 -0000

I really appreciate you kind remarks. Glad someone gets it :)

Re: How Bebo Ruined My Life

Syp — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 12:02:42 -0000

Whitney, your posts are so spot-on (I know this is a > 1 year ago...catching up!). There are people commenting saying, "who cares?", but being a professional with a good reputation makes you want to care. Worst of all, it was out of your control. You've just inspired me to update my address book!

Re: How Bebo Ruined My Life

ravm — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 18:27:53 -0000

I wouldn't worry about it too much. I seriously doubt they'll get added to any direct mailing lists, and really, while it may seem painfully embarrassing, I can guarantee that none of them care about it as much as you do, and none of them will give it a second thought in a week.

Re: How Bebo Ruined My Life

Bryan Ray — Sun, 17 May 2009 21:06:16 -0000

As a point of Internet safety, it's best if you don't allow online services to communicate with one another. Facebook wanted access to my addressbook, too, but as there's no way of knowing who has access to that information or who *might* get access to it in the future, it's far better to restrict it as much as you can.

Sure, maybe all it will do is download my addressbook and send an invite, but with access to my gmail account, it also has access to all of the information in all of the messages retained by gmail. Now, in this case that's not so bad—you're not sending mail through gmail, so probably you've already seen the worst that could happen from this incident.

What happens when some disgruntled employee at Facebook or Bebo or Social Networking du Jour decides to make the software raid a user's mail account and forward every message to everyone in the address book? It hasn't happened yet, that I am aware, but it's only a matter of time until it does.

In short, if you want to send an invitation via a social networking site, compose the email yourself and send it manually. Don't trust the sysadmins to be honest; 99.9% of them are, but .1% is still a really big number when your reputation is at stake.

Thanks for helping to raise awareness!

Re: How Bebo Ruined My Life

mariobourque — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 14:52:34 -0000

Nothing like taking an anonymous shot at somebody. Glad to know there are cowards out there like you. You better hope the hell we never meet.

Re: How Bebo Ruined My Life

Aaron Irizarry — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 12:42:40 -0000

wow bummer... I am sure friends will understand. I guess you can chalk this one up as a "note to self" for next time. :)

Re: How Bebo Ruined My Life

Aaron Irizarry — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 12:40:51 -0000

@voiceoftruth
really... wow that was all you could offer? why even post, I mean I am sure your well thought out and witty response probably took you most of the morning to think of, but come on.

Maybe next time you can use that time doing something a bit more productive, and not so negative... like growing up.

Re: How Bebo Ruined My Life

Chris Love — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 12:39:43 -0000

Wanna Get away, www.southwest.com ;)

Re: How Bebo Ruined My Life

Voice of Truth — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 11:57:26 -0000

It's all becuase of your own stupidity. If you maintained proper relationships with people then you wouldn't have cared at all.

Re: How Bebo Ruined My Life

WTF? — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 15:43:15 -0000

get over it !! what makes you so sure theses exes care
about you and what your doing

Re: How Bebo Ruined My Life

Bart Everson — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 12:39:00 -0000

This happened to me too:

http://b.rox.com/2008/10/14...

I retained my Bebo account and used it to post a cautionary note.

In the social network competition, Bebo lost my mindshare.

Re: How Bebo Ruined My Life

Jay — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 16:06:20 -0000

No offence.

You just need to get over it.

Not like youve given them your home adress.

You can just make a new account, set it to private and get on with your life.

And add the email addresses seperatly.

Re: How Bebo Ruined My Life

JZ — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 10:07:36 -0000

I had never heard of Bebo, but I got an email (surprise, surprise) from a close friend, so I joined. It turns out that she had the same issue, Bebo spammed everyone in her Hotmail contact list, including executives in her company. She was mortified. Sites like these are a disgrace to the web, there should be some sort of class-action lawsuit.

Re: How Bebo Ruined My Life

Laura Schooler — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 09:57:32 -0000

YES! This just happened to me last night! YARGH! I too deleted my account. What a nightmare.

Re: How Bebo Ruined My Life

Michael J. Pratt — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 14:57:29 -0000

I did the exact same thing several weeks ago inviting all my friends to StumbleUpon. To this day I don't know how I did it. Lucky for me the ex's are long gone from my address book and, interestingly, 11 friends wrote to thank me for the heads up on SU. I was pissed at them nonetheless. Oh, and one stone-age dwelling friend mentioned "What the hell is this you sent me?"

Re: How Bebo Ruined My Life

Eduardo — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 02:27:01 -0000

Whitney,

While I feel your pain, probably a lot more due to shoulder/back injuries, this has been documented. One of IxDA's events held at Method someone was talking about "Ethics" in our 'connected-world'.

Unfortunately, not all companies have the sense of mind and respect to well, respect you and your privacy.

The funny thing is, if you read their TOS you probably agreed to even allow them to name your first born.

-- it was Andrew Green from AARF who presented "Mind your manners" it doesn't address your problem, but it talks about our challenges (after all, when we listen to Marketing folks and their amazing ideas - it's our fault if we implement it) - http://www.youtube.com/watc...