Re: [Flickr APIs] people.findByEmail privacy concerns

The problem I see is not to know the email address of someone, but to
make a 1 to 1 connection between email and username (knowing only the
email address) without user concern, I don't know if I can explain it
right or if it is in the end a big deal or not, but lets think on an
example:

Bob is a business man and he also a likes to take pictures of himself
with his secret boyfriends using masks (or some other embarrassing
situation you can think of).

Bob participates of mailing lists that are related with his work, and
he is very respected for his contributions to the list.

Then one day Bob meets Flickr(the website), and decided that it's a
good place to share pictures under a nickname, so he put their real
embarrassing photos on Flickr. He had created his account using his
real email address, and he choose not to let this information(the
email) public in the profile. He tested before to see if there is a
way for someone to find the real email of the "spiceboy" and he trust
the system, once he could'nt find a way to this info leaks.

But the world is small, and someday one work friend(or mailing list
fan) of Bob also meets Flickr(the website), and find it way cool, and
use the api to search who in his addressbook also has an acount so he
can add them as contacts/friends.... using the API  method
people.findByEmail, "spiceboy" is then revealed.

Ok, maybe I went too far with all these suppositions, but maybe it can
make some kind of sense in others mundane scenarios...

Related thread:
http://www.flickr.com/forums/bugs/1464/

[]s

On Thu, 26 Aug 2004 18:31:54 -0700, Cal Henderson 
<cal-YBANsMgXN/7QT0dZR+AlfA@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> : Is it right to everybody be able to retrieve a screenname from the
> : email of someone even if that person did'nt choose to public expose
> : their email?
> 
> yes - you already know their email address if you're
> searching using it.
> 
> --cal
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-- 
Fabricio C Zuardi
http://idomyownstunts.blogspot.com