I noticed the Anti-Spyware Coalition (ASC) recently released their final working report of Spyware definitions. They offer the following definition for Spyware and Other Potentially Unwanted Technologies:
Technologies deployed without appropriate user consent and/or implemented in ways that impair user control over:
- Material changes that affect their user experience, privacy, or system security;
- Use of their system resources, including what programs are installed on their computers; and/or
- Collection, use, and distribution of their personal or other sensitive information.
I think the coalition has done a great job in trying to define what spyware and malware are and I hope their efforts prove beneficial in fighting these types of unwanted technologies. We fully support their efforts and you can/should too!.
I recall back in the early days of Plaxo (yes - all of two and half years ago), the occasional claim that Plaxo was spyware. Many of these claims were traced back to an erroneous article that stated Plaxo hacked Outlook profile passwords as we collected personal information. The reporter of the article later retracted his statement, saying he was misinformed and apologized for passing along erroneous information. Unfortunately, this was well after his misinformation was widely distributed and repeated by others.
But this incident underscored the need to better educate people about spyware, which is part of what the ASC is designed to do. The ASC is committed to improving anti-spyware tools, users' understanding of their options, and communication among all stakeholders about how the technology works. They are certainly not alone in the fight against spyware, so by helping to define what spyware is, anti-spyware vendors can focus their attention on improving their anti-spyware tools. What I really like about the work the ASC has done so far is how it focuses the definition on unwanted behavior, while leaving the door open to continually modify the definition over time.
From Plaxo's perspective, thankfully as we've has grown over the past few years, I feel we've overcome many of the early misperceptions. There's certainly more work to be done, but I do feel people recognize Plaxo as a trusted service and software.
Most people understand that Plaxo is an online contact management service with an optional software component. We provide proper notice and require explicit member consent prior to joining Plaxo and installing the software. Plaxo includes no additional software components, and does nothing to impair a member's control over their own system. We've made great effort to ensure our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy are written in plain and simple language, and should someone wish to remove Plaxo, the software can easily be uninstalled. These are the proper behaviors of legitimate software, which I'm sure the ASC would agree.
If you want to learn more about the Anti-Spyware Coalition, be sure to check out their web site: http://www.antispywarecoalition.org/.
To my knowledge, Plaxo has never been the target of a phishing attack. Unfortunately, in today's world, phishing attacks are a concern for EVERY company.
The best defense against these types of attacks is user education. We have published our Plaxo Anti-phishing Guidelines to help educate users about phishing and guard against possible phishing messages. By learning more about Plaxo’s web and e-mail practices, Plaxo members can avoid becoming unwitting phishing victims.
Our guidelines can be found here: http://www.plaxo.com/privacy/antiphishing
In our continuing series on the new Plaxo Alerts. In the previous article, I talked about the Member Status box. For this article, I wanted to bring attention to the new "From:" portion of Plaxo Alerts.
As members may know, a Plaxo Alert is generated and inserted into the Plaxo member's email Inbox each time the member's address book is updated by Plaxo. An update can occur whenever a member's contact responds to an Update Request or if a member's contact updates their own Plaxo card (assuming the contact is also a Plaxo member). Plaxo updates the Plaxo member's address book automatically and creates a Plaxo Alert to notify the member of what information has been changed.
In the past, some members expressed confusion over who and how the Alert was generated. We wanted to make sure we properly addressed these concerns with the new Plaxo Alerts. The From: header of the Alert now looks something like: From: Joe User via Plaxo
where "Joe User" is the name of the contact whose information was updated via Plaxo.
Since the alert was generated on behalf of the contact (ie: "Joe User") based on his update action, we wanted to make sure to include the contact's name in the From: header. But we also added "via Plaxo
But member's also told us they loved the ability to REPLY TO the contact as a result of the Plaxo Alert. For example, if you received an alert notifying you that "Joe User has a new job!", you might wish to send Joe a congratulation email on his new position. Fortunately, members are still able to accomplish this with the new Plaxo Alerts. The Reply-To: header is set to the return email address of the contact allowing the member to simply click "Reply To" within their email client and send their response.
Recall my earlier post about receiving an IM from Peter L. When AIM first popped up, I didn't initially recognize Peter as a known contact so I was understandably wary of responding back. Peter was able to IM me because he detected my AIM presence through Plaxo. He could see my AIM presence through Plaxo based on my AIM privacy settings which allowed him to look up my AIM Screen Name based on my email address.
It occurs to me that as AIM presence becomes more prevalent, I suspect others may find themselves in a similar situation. I started to wonder if there was a proper etiquette when communicating with someone through IM, in particular with someone who may not recognize you as a known contact.
We face a similar problem with Plaxo, so we've published our Plaxo Etiquette guide that all members are encouraged to follow. I thought for sure there must exist some type of etiquette for IM. To my surprise, I wasn't able to find any specific etiquette guidelines available on any of the major IM services (AOL, MSN, YIM) (actually, Microsoft did have an Instant Messaging Etiquette Guide that had some very good suggestions, but I felt this was slightly different than what I was looking for). I was able Google a number of helpful articles on IM etiquette, but here are a few of my own IM Etiquette suggestions:
- Don't use IM for initial introductions. Try to establish some type of relationship prior to using IM.
- Introduce yourself, especially if you are contacting someone unexpectedly. Make sure they know who you are and how you know each other.
- Be brief and on topic.
- Ask if it's OK to "talk" before jumping into the conversation.
- Use, don't abuse. Respect your contact's privacy. Just because you can see their AIM presence, doesn't mean you should use it.
In my case, I was fortunate because Peter did follow proper IM etiquette. He reminded me how we know each other, and we were able to quickly address his questions.
'til next time.
Stacy Martin
Plaxo Privacy Officer
privacy @t plaxo.com
I love reading about people who have discovered Plaxo's Backup/Restore feature. Here are a few that I recently came across:
What!?!? You're not familiar with Plaxo's Backup/Restore feature! Actually, it wouldn't surprise me if many members were unaware of this extremely valuable and useful feature of Plaxo. The Backup/Restore feature is really a by-product of how the service works (don't tell engineering I said that), so we probably don't make as big a deal of it as we should. But I can tell you it's one of my favorite features of Plaxo.
I can point to testimonial after testimonial where Plaxo's Backup/Restore feature has helped to save the day for a member in distress. The story is always similar - the member experiences some major happening and loses EVERYTHING on their local system. Sometimes it's a system failure, a lost laptop, or stolen system. Any IT expert will tell you that these things do happen and unfortunately, most people do not backup their data so they are left to piece back together their important information.
While we can't help them to restore all of their lost local data, in most cases Plaxo can help to restore their lost contacts, calendar, tasks, and notes information within a matter of minutes. For many, this is some of their most important information that would be nearly impossible to rebuild.
Basically, here's how Plaxo's Backup/Restore feature works.
Imagine that member Bob installs the Plaxo software on his local system. The software helps to keep his local information synchronized with his Plaxo Online account. Bob has a 100 entries in his local address book which are automatically synchronized with his Plaxo Online account. The software regularly checks in with the Plaxo service to make sure the information is always synchronized. The sychronized copy is necessary in order for Plaxo do it's primary magic, but it also has the additional benefit of keeping an up-to-date current copy of Bob's information (there are other benefits, that I'll discuss in later posts).
Now imagine Bob has a system crash and loses all of his local data. Normally Bob would have to remember the 100 people he previously had in his address book. But because Bob is a Plaxo member, he can simply reinstall Plaxo onto his new system and reattach to his existing Plaxo account. Within minutes, Plaxo will restore the 100 contacts existing within his Plaxo account to his local address book. If Bob also had any calendar, notes, and task entries, these would also be restored locally.
Quick, easy, and automatic.
Have you used Plaxo's Backup/Restore feature? We'd love to hear your story too.
Stacy Martin
Plaxo Privacy Officer
privacy @t plaxo.com