Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Why is Yahoo collecting my cell number?
It might be the open source soul in me, but I always hated companies collecting information about me. However, I realize sometimes it is a necessary evil and I can live with that. At least, I expect something tangible in exchange. If you just get my data and you give me nada, I get pissed.One spectacular example is Yahoo Go, advertised quite a bit lately. There is an ad to get you to download Yahoo! Go 2.0 for Windows Mobile, shown below. I would suggest you click on it...
If you followed my suggestion, you have been presented with a page that starts with:
However, if you scroll that list, there is NOT EVEN ONE phone that works! They all say "Coming Soon"... The message should say "We found 0 (zero, nada) phones that work with Yahoo! Go"...
Why would Yahoo do it? Because there is a clear invitation on the right to put your phone number in. They will gladly collect it, send you a message (for which, you'll pay in the US) and have you walk into their site from your phone. At the end, they will tell you your phone is not supported, but they will notify you once it is ready.
If they know my phone is not supported, why are they collecting my cell phone number? Why am I spending my money to receive a message? What do I get back? Nada de nada... I am pissed...
Let's hope the Chief Yahoo! now Chief Executive Yahoo! turns his company around. It starts from the small things, like this one. Don't be evil.
Posted by Fabrizio at 18:15
4 Comments:
Christian said...
Open source, but not open information? ;D *ducks*
Seriously, though:
You make no sense. You are not being forced to use this, and giving your information is completely voluntary. You don't want to give your number while they don't seem to actually have a service? Fine! Don't! Guess what? You don't have to. You can wait for it and do it later when they've actually got something for you.
So have you registered for this or not? The rest of your post sounds like you're speculating, which is just F.U.D. from the very type of person who cries out against it =/
If your carries charges you to receive messages, find another. Unless you're referring to the fact that Yahoo sends you a link, which you'd likely have to pay to surf to from your phone.
And again, it's nothing forced onto you: You observed yourself that the whole thing is not ready yet. So why would you register during the time where it's a service you're not interested in? Some people do want to register early or register for beta software. You don't? That's fine. Again, you don't have to.
And what does this have to do with O.S. anyway?
Comment Posted at 10:10
Fabrizio said...
Hi Christian,
my blog is about mobile and open source, so this one has absolutely nothing to do with open source, just mobile.
I could not try the service, because it does not work on my Treo WM.
I just find misleading to say "it works on your phone" and then "oops, no, sorry". I might catch it but others won't. Misleading is a bad thing, both if you are closed source or not.
Cheers,
fabrizio
Comment Posted at 10:42
Christian said...
Hello again Fabrizio,
My question about open source was only really because of your first statement, "It might be the open source soul in me". I just didn't see how that was relevant - perhaps I'm misunderstanding your mentioning of it.
On the topic of open source, though, I find it regrettable that it's given such little thought - the GP2X, handy and versatile as it is, hardly ever gets spoken about. Hmm, now if it was a phone too, maybe it would've gotten more attention ;P
Unfortunately, though, false advertising does occur. Yes, it's true they don't have the service, but I like I said - they're promising it for those who're interested in knowing ASAP. I agree it would be better for them to say "Actually, we don't support anything yet, but we will support these phones below very soon!".
Sadly, execs hardly ever get the point.
While I've got your attention, does Blogger let you choose which HTML tags are allowed, or is it entirely their mistake to be disallowing such a simple tag as q?
Comment Posted at 11:38
Yahoo is full of it! I haven't provided my cell phone information to Yahoo - and - now I can not log into my Yahoo Mail until I do. Maybe, Just maybe - I don't even have a Cell Phone. This is a very bad business practice!
