Alert: Sharing contact lists

There are numerous services that encourage us to put our contacts lists online on the basis that we have access to them where ever we are. In addition, they suggest that we can make more contacts, and our contacts make additional contacts to, so much so that the range of contacts increases to such heights we are lulled into the belief that all these new contacts will some how yield untold riches.

Nothing is further from the truth. There may well be legitimate services offering secure online contacts databases, but there are a few that require one to peruse their privacy policies very closely.

Bebo is one such service. Here's what we found on their privacy policy pages:

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'.

There is concern in some circles that these services are address hunting exercises that seek to create demographic lists of interest that are then on-sold to third parties.

And another worrisome policy:

Acquisition. It is possible that as we continue to develop our website and our business, Bebo's service and/or related assets might be acquired. Notwithstanding any provision in this policy to the contrary, in event of a merger or acquisition, your personal information may be transferred to the acquiring entity, and become subject to the acquirer's data practices.

And another:

Internal Service Providers for Our Operations. We may use third parties that we refer to as internal service providers to facilitate or outsource one or more aspects of the business, product and service operations that we provide to you (e.g., search technology, email support) and therefore we may provide some of your personal information directly to these internal service providers. These internal service providers' are subject to confidentiality agreements with us and other legal restrictions that prohibit their use of the information we provide them for any other purpose except to facilitate the specific outsourced Bebo related operation, unless you have explicitly agreed or given your prior permission to them for additional uses.

Just what constitutes a "specific outsourced Bebo related operation..."?

Be cautious about listing oneself in an online, centralised, third-party operated address book. You may not always be able to judge a website by its homepage!

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