Subject: Re: [lojban] where the mailing lists lie

From: lojbab <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 20 Apr 2002 15:28:57 -0400

At 12:02 AM 4/20/02 -0700, Robin Lee Powell wrote:
>On Fri, Apr 19, 2002 at 06:08:03PM -0400, lojbab wrote:
> > At 01:09 AM 4/19/02 -0600, Jay Kominek wrote:
> > >Yahoo is making it quite clear that they have no respect for our
> > >privacy, by running around with these plans to sell off our personal
> > >information.
> >
> > They're running a business, and need to make a profit or sooner or
> > later the service will no longer be available.
>
>That's part of the point. What do we do then?

Deal with it. What do we do if Robin Powell suddenly drops off the face of 
the earth (I'm not morbid or anything, but I have already had one younger 
Lojbanist (Preston Maxwell, who did the first translations of material from 
non-English into Lojban) die in the middle of a long exchange of snail mail 
correspondence on what was at the time very important work, and I had no 
idea what happened until I called information and got his parents phone 
number leading to a very embarrassing conversation. Likewise Athelstan's 
injury instantly terminated all of the projects he was working on at the time.

There is nothing in the project that is guaranteed to continue. We have 
some limited plans (such as if something happens to me, Cowan is there to 
take over at least in authority).

> > They've ALWAYS wanted to sell your personal information. You could
> > tell them no before, and you can tell them no now,
>
>Except that they switch it back.

Not clear. It looked like they added a whole set of preferences to replace 
a single one.

They also told us, too. From what it looks like, they implemented the 
screens to enter the data before telling us that they were doing this, but 
the message seemed to indicate that this was all well in advance of 
actually using the information.

> > >It isn't so much a matter of advantages, as lists are relatively
> > >simplistic things. Rather, it is what disadvantages we can avoid.
> >
> > And for all the complaints, I haven't seen anything new. They stuck
> > in a new few options, and used it as an excuse to make it necessary
> > for everyone to say no again. They've done it before. Life goes on.
>
>Who is 'they'? And has it occured to you that if people take it into
>their heads to bitch about this on a regular basis, there might be a
>*reason*?

Many people on the net are paranoid about privacy. Possibly with good 
reason, though I think the bottom line is that privacy of the sort they are 
seeking is long gone, unless you use only encrypted info or false information.

It is also clear that despite people being paranoid, yahoogroups has an 
enormous customer base, so it seems that most people have decided not to 
worry about it.

lojbab