Linda Sherman

Social Media Tool Tips, Health and Well-Being Fitness Tips, Twitter Extensions

Check Your Yahoo Privacy Settings - Social Graph Option

This morning one of my clients contacted me with an emergency request.  For the last couple of days very strange things were happening with his Yahoo account. His wife was notified on her Yahoo.com that he had just visited a particular internet site. It appeared even his emails were publicly visible to his contacts. He was able to see emails of a business associate who also used Yahoo mail. 

I don't use Yahoo webmail and I don't advise my clients to do so but as with all relationships, clients come with baggage. We are currently setting up a WordPress website for him and will give him a much nicer e-mail shortly. Next step will be off webmail on to Outlook. 

I took a look @Yahoo (Yahoo on Twitter) for clues as to recent changes they have made. I found reference to #YProductRunway which sounds a lot like the Facebook Social Graph project.

I sent out a couple of tweets. 

Then I went to my own Yahoo account to see what settings I could help my client edit.  I believe this settings page is key. Make sure that you have unchecked the social graph option which says:
"Allow my connections to share information about me with the applications they use; including those not developed by Yahoo!."  I have everything unchecked as you can see below. 

Manage-yahoo-privacy

I am leaving Hide my profile unchecked for now as I have just joined a Yahoo Group for a women's group I want to participate in. Not thrilled about the platform but great group of women.

Be sure to also go to your Yahoo email settings (even if you don't use it, if you have signed up for Yahoo to use one of their products, it has automatically set up e-mail for you).  Uncheck "Share my Updates". How to get here? Yahoo does not make it easy to find this page. When you are on your Yahoo mail, click on "contacts". Pull down "tools" and click on "seeing updates from". Make sure you have unclicked "share my updates".

Contacts_page
Share_my_updates_off

In case your wondering about my inbox on yahoo mail - that's 99% from Flickr.

Are You Using GeoLocation Platforms Safely

Today LaLaWag posted an excellent article written by Melissa Jun Rowley called FourSquared and FourScared  Important interviews with Sarah J. Gim and Paige Craig illustrate the specific types of scams that can happen. 

I have a great interest in Geolocation platforms and have been striving to use them safely.  As a Social Media Marketing Consultant, I think it is important to understand these platforms to be able to make recommendations to my clients. There are also positives in using these services which I have mentioned elsewhere on this blog and will write more about in the future.

It is not necessary to list your phone number on any of these platforms. I don't.  It is also not necessary to post outside your Geolocator network to Twitter or Facebook.

I vet people I friend carefully on all the platforms I am on. For Geolocation platforms, the vetting goes up a notch. Usually I know them personally. If not, we are selected Facebook friends. Frankly, Twitter friends alone is not enough to convert to a Geolocation buddy.

I am on FourSquare, Gowalla and Whrrl. I have zero intention of turning on the geolocator function on for Twitter or any other public platform. 

There may still be issues even with all these precautions, based on the podcast from the geolocation panel at SXSWi that points out there are ways to access the data inside these services if someone is so skilled as to do so.

Whrrl has a special privacy level called "trusted friends". Here is what John Kim, head of product marketing for Whrrl had to say about privacy on Geolocators.