How smelly is fish?

One blogger worthy of checking out is Tania's blog. Unfortunately she reduces the value of some her powerful arguments at least with exaggeration, and sadly with poor research. For example, she claims to speak for "virtually all" owners and moderators. That is such a large claim that, given the absolutely huge number of groups, owners and moderators that there are owes more to the strength of her emotion than the strength of her arguments.

Let us examine one of those arguments. She has made one posting grouply = phishing, which is a very commendable question to ask. So let us understand what phishing is. To me (and wikipedia) phishing is making a website or email look like something it is not in order to glean personal information. Typically this is done by taking a copy of a web page, such as a registration page but whatever data is entered by the user goes to some unknown person or company that then uses your data for nefarious purposes.

Well, certainly there is a charge that Grouply might be in a position to use personal data for incorrect purposes. That is a valid question. If Tania limited herself to that great.

But phishing? In what senses could Grouply be considered phishing? Well all the times I have used Grouply it has been at the Grouply website. I have never heard of one instance when someone has said they have been taken to some weird website, so in that sense it is not phishing.

Another aspect of phishing is when some gets your data by false pretences. Everything that Grouply does is up front. It is fully documented on their public help system and only takes a couple of minutes to read.

The only sense in which it could be argued that it is phishing is if they used any data so collected for nefarious purposes. If anyone has any valid claims on this then I suggest they report to TrustE, with whom grouply is registered in order to give reassurance in the context of privacy of data so that what they say they do, and only that.

Phishing? Please form your own judgement. You may or may not like any website service. That is your choice, but please let us stick to facts.

I could go on and comment on her assertion that Yahoo Group users can gain access to posts in groups they do not even belong to, but that is so ridiculous I find myself concerned about her resentment about the additional work she claims she has undertaken.

Next time, Tania please do some half-decent research first and you might save yourself some of that obvious resentment, never mind save some hours of your own effort and also the concern you raise in your group's membership.

Finally, I am not saying that the entirety of what Tania is saying is rubbish. Just that this is a misfired deluge that comes from the heart out of concern for the safety and privacy of her groups and members. Let's get that right and stop talking about this phishing nonsense.