Question re: email addresses

[Aceon6]

Between my husband and I, we have Gmail, 4 Yahoos, Hotmail, Mac, and 2 corporate. None have ever been hacked and I find them pretty much the same.

[numbers123]

You misunderstood: it's my teens on gmail chat and they use it it to yammer with real-life friends. Gmail also has open chat rooms so anyone can chime in, including the predator who asked for a photo of one girl. Fortunately, she got scared, but the dirtbag was still poking around last time I checked (and reported him for something he said to someone else.) There are no settings that I can find that will let me lock them down to chat with only their contacts. So, I have to trust and audit regularly.

I still don't understand. Do you want to totally eliminate gmail for your entire household or what? As I understand it anyone can create an gmail account so you eliminating yours doesn't eliminate theirs

[Anita18]

You misunderstood: it's my teens on gmail chat and they use it it to yammer with real-life friends. Gmail also has open chat rooms so anyone can chime in, including the predator who asked for a photo of one girl. Fortunately, she got scared, but the dirtbag was still poking around last time I checked (and reported him for something he said to someone else.) There are no settings that I can find that will let me lock them down to chat with only their contacts. So, I have to trust and audit regularly.

I've never cared for Google as a company. The "play at work" atmosphere doesn't inspire my confidence and their applications are invasive. My major issue is that they have a continuing tradition, like Facebook, of privacy invasion. It started when their "Google your hard drive" application came out - they were uploading copies of your hard drive directories without your permission and without any way for you to opt out. That "let's cull as much as we can before we get caught" attitude persists today with their advertising and social networking linkage. It's only a matter of time until a tech-head raises a fuss about iGoogle's personal info collection. (And they're looking.)

Not that Yahoo! is much better, but Google is a bigger offender.

Google actually does not have open chat rooms. If you want to hold a chat with multiple people, you have to add them individually and they obviously already have to be on your chat list. You can also easily block someone from chat if you want to.

I have also never heard of this "Google your hard drive" application, and I keep up with tech news pretty regularly. I even got an invite to Google Wave that I never used. I Googled ( ) "google your hard drive" and got something for GDrive, but it never launched. Now they have Google Docs but you only upload what you want to.

Google may know a frightening amount about you, but I'm afraid you're mistaken thinking they've done things they haven't.

[numbers123]

Google may know a frightening amount about you, but I'm afraid you're mistaken thinking they've done things they haven't.

And what Google knows about you, the rest of the internet does too. It is the world of big brother.
Google your name and then use Internet Explorer and search your name. I bet that the results for both would be the same. Life is social media these days. All of us need to be vigilant for what we post and do as it spreads quickly and stays there forever.

You will find predator lurking/posting on any site.

[FigureSpins]

Google actually does not have open chat rooms. If you want to hold a chat with multiple people, you have to add them individually and they obviously already have to be on your chat list. You can also easily block someone from chat if you want to.

I have also never heard of this "Google your hard drive" application, and I keep up with tech news pretty regularly. I even got an invite to Google Wave that I never used. I Googled ( ) "google your hard drive" and got something for GDrive, but it never launched. Now they have Google Docs but you only upload what you want to.

Google may know a frightening amount about you, but I'm afraid you're mistaken thinking they've done things they haven't.

No, I'm not mistaken. I've been an IT Professional since 1978 and Numbers is right: you have to protect yourself because software companies are only looking to sell anything they can grab.

1) You're confusing my complaint about the gmail chat rooms with Google's predatory information retrieval. It's a common error since Google owns Gmail. Gmail does have chat rooms that are open to anyone.
Chat is embedded in the email client application for gmail and there are "rooms" on the iPod app the kids use with that ID. I hate it, but they love it because they can blather away about anime and boys with their real-life friends until I make them sign off.

While I have no qualms about blocking someone, the issue is that my kids are naive. One of them added someone with a girl's name because she thought it was a classmate. Turned out it wasn't her classmate, it was some person in Japan (allegedly) and the broken english gave me the impression it was a guy. So, while yes, I CAN block people, that requires vigilance on my part. If the friggin' chat option didn't exist, I wouldn't have to worry about it at all. That's my point and why I hate the stupid feature. It's really too open for kids, even though they are old enough, they will make mistakes. (Like the guy who found DD's Twitter account tonight and wanted to "educate" her about herpes. Dopey kid wanted her friends to find her in the directory so she unlocked that setting. To make it even more annoying, I have twins, so everything has to be done twice on every bloody account. Arrrgh.

2) There have been several instances of Google's lack of privacy concerns over the years, including the one I mentioned. GDrive was rumored to be unlimited online storage, but the cost and logistics were stumbling points. It was intended to be a competitor to Yahoo!'s online storage being offered to their premium members for backup and data retrieval. In a way, the research done on GDrive was partially used for Google Docs.

When Google Desktop came out, it took inventory of your hard drive and applications and uploaded the results to Google servers without permission. They intended to use it to tally how many people have certain software installed. The IT geeks realized it early on and screamed loudly from every trade journal, blog and tech column.

A few years ago, Microsoft changed their software installment policies. Rumors I read at the time said it was based on information showing that many already-installed copies of Windows were bootleg copies. Those same rumor-mongers said the data came from the initial Google Desktop data, which was never supposed to see the light of day. I don't know that I believe that, however most the people who took Google Desktop for a test drive were IT geeks, so their copies may have appeared to be bootleg since many companies would "ghost" hard drives to cut down on installation time. (Ghosting is when they do a full, clean installation on a computer, and then copy/clone that hard drive to another drive for installation and usage in a different computer.) Typically, you would test new software using a freshly installed computer, so you could see what the impact was of putting something new on just that one computer.) The OS wasn't really an illegal copy because the company would buy a "site license" that allowed x number of computers. In testing, a computer would be "reset" using the ghost image before the next round of tests, but it was only one computer, regardless of the number of times it was reimaged.

Less than 2 years ago, Google's CEO basically said, if you don't want us to cull it, don't use the internet. Nice guy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critici...Google#Privacy

I've written white papers on this crap, so I do know what I'm talking about.

[Really]

In the end, it's up to parents to monitor what their kids are doing, whether it's in real life, or online. Chat rooms have always been available in one way or another, so it's not like Google is doing anything that hasn't been done before. The internet isn't going away, so parents really do have to take the responsibility to make themselves aware of what's out there. There are enough resources out there for parents to use -- and yes, even Google can help find them!

Of course, the other alternative is to just ban your kids from the internet...

[Anita18]

No, I'm not mistaken. I've been an IT Professional since 1978 and Numbers is right: you have to protect yourself because software companies are only looking to sell anything they can grab.

1) You're confusing my complaint about the gmail chat rooms with Google's predatory information retrieval. It's a common error since Google owns Gmail. Gmail does have chat rooms that are open to anyone.
Chat is embedded in the email client application for gmail and there are "rooms" on the iPod app the kids use with that ID. I hate it, but they love it because they can blather away about anime and boys with their real-life friends until I make them sign off.

While I have no qualms about blocking someone, the issue is that my kids are naive. One of them added someone with a girl's name because she thought it was a classmate. Turned out it wasn't her classmate, it was some person in Japan (allegedly) and the broken english gave me the impression it was a guy. So, while yes, I CAN block people, that requires vigilance on my part. If the friggin' chat option didn't exist, I wouldn't have to worry about it at all. That's my point and why I hate the stupid feature. It's really too open for kids, even though they are old enough, they will make mistakes. (Like the guy who found DD's Twitter account tonight and wanted to "educate" her about herpes. Dopey kid wanted her friends to find her in the directory so she unlocked that setting. To make it even more annoying, I have twins, so everything has to be done twice on every bloody account. Arrrgh.

I've written white papers on this crap, so I do know what I'm talking about.

Sorry about the misunderstanding about the chat rooms - that's just how I read it. I didn't realize your kids were really that naive.

I didn't grow up with the internet, I'm not sure how I would have reacted if I had chat rooms all the time. I did participate in forums by the time I was in middle school but I never got personal with anyone and I was never stalked by creeps. I'm afraid the only solution is to teach internet users (including kids) not to be naive.

[FigureSpins]

Guess admitting that I take responsibility for my children as opposed to their friends' parents who are clueless, is just hilarious to know-it-alls with reading comprehension issues. I've already said that I audit and keep track of them, so you're preaching to the choir, ladies.

[Anita18]

In the end, it's up to parents to monitor what their kids are doing, whether it's in real life, or online. Chat rooms have always been available in one way or another, so it's not like Google is doing anything that hasn't been done before. The internet isn't going away, so parents really do have to take the responsibility to make themselves aware of what's out there. There are enough resources out there for parents to use -- and yes, even Google can help find them!

Of course, the other alternative is to just ban your kids from the internet...

It's not just making parents aware of the danger of the internet - if you don't teach that to the kids, your only solution is to continue to protect them (until when, exactly?) instead of teaching them to avoid problems in the first place, and teaching them the resourcefulness to solve the problems that DO pop up.

But anyway, this thread isn't about parenting. I've actually never heard of anyone who likes Yahoo over Gmail, but then again I don't know how I functioned before labels and email search.