bebo.com: good or evil?

March 28, 2005 2:20 PM

I've gotten a couple e-mails from bebo.com recently as friends have signed up with the service. Should I join as well?

It seems like a good idea in theory, especially since my group of friends tends to be a bit nomadic and it is difficult to keep up to date on everyone's current snail mail address and phone number. However, I know next to nothing about these Bebo people. Can I trust them with mine and my friends' e-mail and snail mail addys?

posted by sanitycheck to computers & internet (7 comments total)

I did a brief google a while ago on them, and they seem massively dodgy. Their T&Cs seem to be a sore point with many, and basically say your information is theirs to pimp as they see fit. It was suss enough for me to drop the idea there and then.

Links are at home, I can dig them up later if you like.
posted by bonaldi at 2:26 PM on March 28, 2005

From the Bebo Privacy Policy:


What do you use my personal details for?
...We will use your email address to contact you from time to time...


Advertisers. We disclose non-personally identifiable aggregated (gather up data across all member accounts) information to advertisers and other third parties. An example of non-personally identifiable information would be 'the number of members aged 20-30'.

Service Management. ...We use your personal information to ... inform you about offers, products, services, and updates...

...You agree that we may use your personal information to contact you and deliver information to you that, in some cases, are targeted to your interests, such as targeted banner advertisements...


Essentially, they won't sell your info to advertisers, but they will advertise to their userbase on behalf of marketers. I don't like it.
posted by ori at 3:06 PM on March 28, 2005

funny.

four people sent me bebo emails. i wrote back to all of them with a very warm personal note -- long time no see, personal update, request for same -- but didn't fill out the bebo form. never heard back from any of them.

seems that it's just another tool for the lazy and disconnected. why should i care that someone who doesn't want to talk to me now knows where i would receive mail should they ever pick up a pen?

keeping track of people is hard. but if they're not worth keeping track of, they're not worth keeping track of. in my opinion.
posted by xz at 4:32 PM on March 28, 2005

Anyone notice that Ringo looks and feels just like Bebo? They also just happen to operate out of the same building on the same floor, just check out the about pages for both companies. [I found that tip here.]

Anyway, anyone know what's going on there?
posted by nbrier at 5:38 PM on March 28, 2005

I got a few Ringo invites a couple of months ago. I'm suspicious of the whole thing being some kind of big elaborate spam ring...
posted by swank6 at 8:49 PM on March 28, 2005

Someone put my email address in a similar thing. I was rather aggravated, since it involved giving my address to an unknown 3rd party. Now I get spam, although of course I don't know that is why.

Quite reminds me of the old days and MCI's "Friends and Family" program, where you give them the numbers you want discounts on, and they didn't tell you they would then start phoning those people to get them to sign up for MCI long distance.
posted by Goofyy at 9:02 PM on March 28, 2005

Then there's Plaxo, and Return Path.
posted by Tubes at 12:28 AM on March 29, 2005