Re: [Flickr APIs] people.findByEmail privacy concerns

I think this is a legitimate concern - notwithstanding the fact that
you can search by email address on the website now, the example that
Fabricio gave is a good.

Here's another - a mortuary owner in Seattle hears about Flickr, sees
Underbunny's photos - http://www.flickr.com/photos/underbunny/ - and
has a hunch that the anonymous Underbunny is someone who works at one
of his places, searches and finds out that he's right, then fires her.
Boo!

*Of course*, the web is the web and nothing is anonymous and it is not
like Flickr is going to make a difference one way or the other, but it
is partly perception and I can understand why our current practice
would make some people uncomfortable.

Is people.findByEmail useful or just there for completeness? (If so,
what's a use case?)

(And we can talk internally about leaving email searching in the
people searching on the site.)

- Stewart


On Fri, 27 Aug 2004 04:16:29 -0300, Fabricio Zuardi 
<fabricio-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 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
> 
> 
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