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David - Perhaps you can contact me. I'm the Privacy Officer here at Plaxo and understandably I'd like to figure out what may have occurred here.

Plaxo members have the ability to send update request message to people in their address book, similar to the message you mentioned you received and responded to. But simply responding to this message would not cause you to become a member, nor result in you sending a mail to everyone in your address book. I'd like to see if we can figure out what may have happened.

Thanks,

Stacy Martin
Plaxo Privacy Officer
privacy @t plaxo.com

Stacy,

Thanks for noticing and responding.

I am a Plaxo member. I signed up years ago. I clicked on the link in an email prompting my to update my data. When I was done, I clicked what I thought was a simple "ok, accept my changes" button not knowing that it would trigger an action on Plaxo's part.

Maybe I pressed the wrong button. All I know is that I started to hear from people who apparently had mail sent to them.

Ah... I think I understand.

A lot of people mistake Plaxo for simply being about sending and replying to update request emails. That is certainly one way that people use Plaxo, but Plaxo is really about keeping people connected and updated automatically.

As a Plaxo member, you are able to connect to other Plaxo members (based on their privacy settings) and other Plaxo members are able to connect to you, based upon your Privacy settings.

When you are connected to another member, you are able to be updated each time that connect-to member updates their own information. Their entry in your address book is automatically updated, and you receive a Plaxo Alert notifying you of the action.

When others are connected to you, they are updated automatically each time you update your own Plaxo information. They too receive a Plaxo Alert notifying them that your entry in their own address book has been updated.

So basically, when you recently updated your Plaxo cards, this did NOT result in everyone in your address book being sent a message. But it did result in those other Plaxo members connected to you to be automatically updated with your updated contact information. They received an alert, and it sounds like they used the occasion to touch bases with you. This is quite common, and been the basis for restarting relationships between contacts who have lost touch with each other.

I'm sorry this benefit of Plaxo was not understood and this is how Plaxo works, but I hope this helps. If there is anything else I can do, please let me know.

Thanks,

Stacy Martin
Plaxo Privacy Officer
privacy @t plaxo.com

I got one of those emails, but noticed that the address hadn't actually changed, so figured you'd just relocated your offices into another room at Westbourne Terrace - from the north basement to the south den, perhaps. Hence the urgent need to redirect all incoming mail and alert your expectant audience of the need to reorient their Weinberger shrines accordingly.

Plaxo is a mean system and should not be supported. It requires you to "opt out" separately for every person who might Plaxo you. That is ludicrous! There should be a law that requires a "global opt out" option. I've received many Plaxo requests and they are almost all from people who've never personally emailed me, let alone taken time to talk to me. Why on earth do they need my contact information I don't know. Especially because it's not hard to find. Plaxo is a very selfish, egocentric way to run one's personal world. It's basically a spam system fueled by vanity and self-importance that bludgeons people into participation. That's almost as bad as Google holding a cache of the entire Internet but not allowing anybody to scrape its pages. There's a simple rule: Do to others as you would have them do to you. Plaxo and Google have launched a new morality: Be so powerful as to get away with stuff that nobody can afford to let you not get away with. Oh, may you crumble and I tread on your ruins and celebrate with the free people we shall all be. I think these corporations are all nests for demons, empty shells, vehicles for eliminating responsibility, genies who have all the rights of humans with none of the moral responsibilities. Corporations - you will serve mankind in hell as the self-destructive machines that consume all wicked fictions. Thank you, and With best wishes.

Same thing happened to me this week. Someone asked me to update my info, and when I did, holy crap, it sent it to everyone I'm linked to and it's been too long for me to know who that is. And since I had changed some stuff I wouldn't have changed if I had known it was being transmitted to the Pope and his wife, I was a bit chaffed as well.

Andrius - actually you can opt-out from receiving messages from all Plaxo members, if you so desire (http://www.plaxo.com/opt_out).

The opt-out is intended provide non-members control over their privacy. While we can't stop someone from maintaining your email address in their address book, or even trying to communicate with you outside of our service, at your instruction, the opt-out capability instructs us to block communications sent to you through our service.

Many other services such as Yahoo!, Amazon, eBay, and AOL also allow members to use their respective service to send messages to non-members. Plaxo is the only one I am familiar with that allows non-members to instruct the service provider to block these messages.

I'm really pleased to see step out in public to clarify what happened. I had an encounter a year ago with someone purporting to be from Plaxo over on Sandhill (Frank's place). I commented based on some proven technical issues with how people use Plaxo and why it isn't permitted in the environment I oversee. And those reasons are as much about users inability to understand how to use it wisely as they are about the idea itself. But I digress. The "Plaxo person" at that time, halfway identified himself, took a cheap shot and vanished to never complete the conversation. For me, that also said a lot.

Stacy stepping in and explaining, openly identifying his role with Plaxo, and being up front about things goes a long way to earn credibility. Even for those of us who don't like the way Plaxo works, or the way users naively mis-use it (which is really more often the case), an open conversation from a company's privacy officer is a good thing. Thanks for responding to David, Stacy.

Andreas Feuerstein wrote me, so I post my reply here as well:

The people who use Plaxo are the ones who have lots and lots of "contacts". If they only had a few, they wouldn't need Plaxo.

These "contacts" are typically people who they have met, have their business card, but beyond that, may have never spoken to on the phone, and may have no real desire to do so.

And, frankly, even if they did, the simplest way to connect with them would be to email them first. Really, email is all they need anyways until they really do want to connect with them. And maybe it will turn out the other side is busy or isn't interested to talk with them.

Now Plaxo puts people on the spot because it says: here is a person who will be sending you "requests" every so often - live with it OR join Plaxo. And suppose you know ten people like that. You are bullied into using Plaxo. That's their marketing model and it's intentional (viral as in disease). And these are people who, more likely than not, don't actually care about you, you're just on their lists as people they may potentially care to be connected with.

Recently, Plaxo made available a "general opt-out". But that's not upfront or obvious. They want you to opt-out of each person individually, because then you might as well join Plaxo.

I conclude that people who use Plaxo are thoughtless, egocentric and don't care about other people. And I think others draw the same conclusion. That's the real reason not to use Plaxo.

Andrius

P.S. Dear Stacy Martin, It's impressive, in a way, that you're able to call a mass-mailed update request a "message". The companies you mention I think all have terms of service that prohibit spammers from using their service. I think that's my problem: Plaxo behaves as if it is deliberate, sanctioned, organized spam. Thank you for letting me know of the global opt-out. Please make that option explicit as such in each "message" that your users send. That would be great!

Andrius - We too have a terms of service that prohibits the usage of Plaxo for sending spam.

The purpose of an updates request is to stay in touch with people you know. We have defined within our terms of service that spamming would include sending any commercial advertisement or solicatation through Plaxo, or sending messages to people you do not know or who are unlikely to know you. Plaxo members are expected to abide by our Plaxo Terms of Service and follow proper Plaxo etiquette (http://www.plaxo.com/privacy/manners).

As for the global opt-out only "recently" being available, this is incorrect. We have provided an opt-out/block list feature for well over 2 years now. An opt-out link is included in each update request message processed through the Plaxo service. Following the link, the recipient can choose if they wish to block further messages from just an individual Plaxo member or block all further update requests from all Plaxo members trying to stay in touch with them. So while we can not stop someone who maintains your email from attempt to communicate with you, we can stop those communicates from being processed through our service.

I also feel your profile of the average Plaxo user is misguided. The large percentage of Plaxo members have an address book with at most a few hundred entries. These entries typically are friends, family and co-workers well known to the member.

As you suggested, the member could just use email to stay in touch with these people, but I'm sure you would agree this is an extremely manual and error prone activity. If you send an email to someone with your new contact info, they have to manually copy it to their address in order to stay in touch with you. If they fail to do so, they may not be able to contact you later on if they were to change their own information.

Plaxo simplifies this process. You still control when and to whom you send an update request email to someone, but your updated information is sent as a standard vCard attachment which the recipient can easily add to their addressbook with a simple click. They can also respond to your update request with their own information and any information they provide is automatically inserted back into your address book. This helps to make it easier to stay in touch.

Stacy Martin
Plaxo Privacy Officer
privacy @t plaxo.com

Tried several times to resolve a problem with PLAXO but they never e-mailed or called. Total LACK of customer service from a PAYING customer no less.