Trust Us, We're Yuku
I was looking at a query someone had submitted where they signed up to Yuku and claimed that their username was their full name.
They are clearly stupid because:
- Once you fill in your details, the system prompts you for a username, suggesting Firstname Lastname; and
- why would anyone want to sign up to Yuku in the first place?
Anyway, once you get past that, you are presented with a truly bizarre page which says:
“Sign Up Find friends already using Yuku!Welcome to Yuku, {Username}!
Who’s here already? Some of your friends may already be members of Yuku. Find out who!
Use your address book if you’d like to check:Yuku will NEVER store your login information for other websites.”
The page then has icons for Hotmail, GMail, Yahoo! Mail!, AOL and “Manual”.
Click on the GMail one, for instance, and it says:
“Find friends already using Yuku!Check your Gmail contacts to see if friends and family are already signed up with Yuku! Just type your email address and password below and we’ll do all the work.
Please Note: Yuku will never save your password information. We will also never sell any email addresses we retrieve from your contact lists. Please review our privacy policy.”
So what they’re asking is for you to trust them with your GMail log-in details - which would also provide access to Google Adsense, Google Adwords, Google Video and many other Google services.
The privacy policy link is silent on this.
But surely you can rely on ezboard’s security? Well, they do admit that:
“Your information is stored on Yuku’s servers located in the United States. We use procedural and technical safeguards to protect your personal information against loss or theft as well as unauthorized access and disclosure to protect your privacy.That being said, “perfect security” does not exist on the Internet. Unfortunately, no data transmission over the Internet can be guaranteed to be absolutely secure. As a result, while we strive to protect your personal information, Yuku cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information you transmit to us or from our online products or services, and you do so at your own risk. Once we receive your transmission, we make our best effort to ensure the security of your information on our systems.
Please note that we cannot guarantee the security of member account information. Unauthorized entry or use, hardware or software failure, and other factors may compromise the security of member information at any time. Therefore, although we use industry standard practices to protect your privacy, we do not promise, and you should not expect, that your personal information or private communications will always remain private.”
Well we all know about ezboard’s backups and how good they are.
So they’re now asking us to trust them if we sign up with them?
I don’t think so!
Oh and as an aside, my shiny new Yuku account told me I had a new personal message (or at least it would have if I knew what the little glowing arrow meant).
It starts:
“Welcome to Yuku! You’ve joined the ranks of over 15 million people united by communities with free image sharing and profiles.”
Wow! So there are over 15 million people on Yuku? Really?
Mind you, I can trust them not to lie to me, can’t I? I just did with all my Google details, after all.
And of course they obviously aren’t bundling in the ezboard claimed numbers because ezboards don’t have free image sharing, do they?
And wow! I already have 105 Kudos! And Brad Pitt is my friend too apparently!
And not once was I required to confirm my e-mail address to enable my profile. Not that anyone would ever abuse that by setting up spurious Yuku accounts, would they?
