I happen to know the people behind Huminity - they are two sweet people who really beleive in their privacy statement. The goal is, beleive it or not, to try and create something good!

They are both people who did a lot of networking (human networking with business colleagues), they wanted to see a tool that helped to do the same thing that you do in a real-life networking event, on the internet, and they did not find such tools. this is why with the help of a team of developers, they have created this tool. I also helped create some of the server backend, and I know the emails are very secure. The database is protected behind several layers. Of course, nothing is ever so safe, BUT, let's not forget this is the same internet where spammers harvest millions of emails on websites and newsgroups...

I personally think that more than reasonable efforts were spent to make sure the email addresses are safe. Sure, it is your right to be suspicious. I personally uninstalled Kazaa and other such crap because of spyware. Some tools claim to have no spyware in them, but they contain such software anyway!! Some spy tools even install themselves automatically with the aids of exploits in Outlook and Outlook express... so? Am I going to stop using Outlook?! Why do I trust microsoft, a company that sold me an operating system so flawed, that an exploit appears every week, with a virus deadlier than the previous? Why do I keep using it?! ;-)

I think you guys should give some credit to these people, read the web page, try to beleive some of it. I personally know it's all true and more. They really are very very good people. The kinda people your mom would tell you to do business with.

About the location of their premises - this was done for tax reasons. Nothing more. Most international internet businesses do that today. No biggie.

Just my two cents,

       Skaag

is there an open-source alternative?

Edited by author 04-04-2003 12:38 AM
just a remembering note

any business transaction must be reinforce with a normal
letter in a week
and this accept need to be send back by the company to the customer
so the transaction can be legaly registrered.
an electronic transaction can always be controversial cause of the abscence of real signature and hand writing.
just in case there is any doubt look international business laws.

Edited by author 04-04-2003 12:32 AM
spying and placing active x without the conscent of the owner of a pc without a real approvel is a violation of privacy
many programmors and companies do not respect the rules because they want to do business above human right and respect of the customer choice.
they are taking the wrong path and they have to pay
it is to much today to many people do not care anymore and this lead to the end of the safe and democratic world we did knew.
every internet site need to have and entrance side with simple choice and real registration secure side that will simply with a good logistic keep the internet business really in balance.

In one word, does it worth using Huminity ? I don't mind to be spied by any commercial organisation, but does it represent any interest ?

Do you remember start of ICQ?
It is the same situation. I gave Huminity just few adresses I want to add. It is so simple to delete all the others. Just read the preview. I like this concept and I like free Internet. I am using Huminity 2,5 month and never had any SPAM. Now all my friends use it too without any problem.

I don't disagree... I just felt obligated to post their response. I was hoping they would come here and engage in dialogue about their practices.

Edited by author 02-02-2003 06:46 AM
Jonl sorry I should have been more sensitive about the use of my name.

It seems to me that what I want is a change in the program and not an explanation. I am recommending to everyone I know to not use this program in any way.

The comment "* Emails of contacts are not disclosed on the map to no-one." is questionable. First, Huminity has all of the emails of contacts and so they are disclosed to the people of Huminity. Are they trustworthy? Are they a front for a big national security organisation? Are they a division of a marketing company? They corporate location certainly raises some questions in me.

Second, given the dubious nature of their concern about privacy, I have real doubts about the truth of this statement.

Third, I am concerned about the modifier "on the map". Are email address that are not "on the map" disclosed? They collect email address by the thousands and this is a real risk to my personal security.

this is the same standard answer as posted in the original message by Gerrit
the fact remains that without warning people they send out huge amounts of spam to your contacts with your name as a recommandation to try the tool, referring to you as their friend

it is very misleading and time to inform the world abou this misguiding

who is going to alarm on a broader platform? Huminity is a major security risk to all of us

I contacted Huminity and got this response:

Dear Jon,

Thank you for pointing to us that some people have hard feelings about Huminity.
 
The Huminity initiative is a free initiative, and we therefore see it as our moral obligation to inform all contacts that are included by users. This is done by a one-time notification in which these contacts are presented the means of asking to be removed, with or without a consent from the user that has included them in his/her contact-tree. These contacts are in no way on any Huminity Mailing list, and as stated before, we see it as our moral obligation to inform these contacts.
 
We do not hide the fact that we notify the contacts in the installation, and in our website, both under Software, and under Privacy, and of-course in the User Agreement. Moreover, we specifically delay the sending of e-mails from the user's first log-in into the Huminity Network. During this time, a user can remove any contact that he/she wishes, or ultimately remove all his/her contacts, and those contacts that are removed do not receive an e-mail notification.

We in Huminity take the privacy issue very seriously. As a company that prides in being “community friendly” we have given great thought about protecting the privacy of our users and contacts. Among the steps we took:

User
====
* Data kept: contacts, name and free text (which can be changed or removed at any time by the user), and user’s email address (which is fixed, and the user can decide if this address will be seen by other users or not). Since this data is not more sensitive than the data contained by any regular e-mail that is sent by a user, and moreover it can include nickname or no free-text at all, and can be changed by the user at ant time, we feel that the user’s has full control over these fields and privacy is not harmed.
* User can choose to disclose or not to disclose his/hers email
* User can choose to disclose or not to disclose if online
* When user uninstalls the software, the default is that his/her record and contacts are erased from the database (unless he/she wishes to leave the contacts since the user connects though several computers for example).

Contacts
=======
* Emails of contacts are not disclosed on the map to no-one.
* Contacts are notified by a one-time email notification about their inclusion in the Huminity network. We see it as our obligation to notify contacts of their inclusion in the network and allow them at their own will to be delisted. Though this item is sometimes considered wrongly as SPAM by users and contacts, we think that it would be inconceivable NOT to notify contacts about their inclusion, even by their friends.

General
======

*Access to the servers and database is granted to few
*We don’t have spyware
*We don’t use cookies

We hope this explains the logic concerning the issues that were raised.

Kind regards,
The Huminity Team

I can't believe they did this! That's soo bad.
I mean, if you wanr users, fine. Let them decide. But to just copy entire addr books... jeez! When will they learn?
It seems to me that everytime there's this company that makes some great sw and then messes up by secretly transmitting personal details or email addresses to themselves. Why?

I think it's the business guys or markting divisions or so, that want some quick cash in return. Something to keep investors happy and show them something. Anything. So they fall low and "steal" data or invade privacy... *sigh*

Money makes the world go round... unfortunately.
Dreams.

I think it is pretty disturbing if more companies start to use these kind of software. (I hope they registered it, so no one can easily copy the concept :-)) In the first place it seems very un-ethic to me to withdraw something from someone's personal environment (in this case a PC) without VERY clearly communicating that this is part of the product. Even stronger, this seems like theft to me just like someone who would walk in to my house and take my address book as part of something I ordered. No, you can't do that.

I was added as well on the Huminity network and I'm also very concerned about their commercial model. As we all know building products costs money so how would they like to get their ROI's? What does this mean for the privacy of those unwillingly added?

In the end it's, again, also one of the very well known flaws of Microsoft products: I'm still happy to work on a Mac and would sometimes wish everyone who is having me in their contact list would do so too. :-)

Please, let's all help stopping these companies like Huminity...

Best Regards,



Jeroen van de Wiel
http://www.jeroen.com

(Just a clarifying note: the jon who posted below isn't me, Jon Lebkowsky, posting as jonl. I set up the discussion but I haven't actually used Huminity. I suppose we should ask them to review and respond to the comments here.)

Today I uninstalled Huminity and the result was that my pst files for outlook were deleted, no mail, no archives, no addresses. I am still trying to recover them.

This is the response of a friend who placed me in a tree :

"Yikes, it took ALL Your outlook contacts? OH DEAR. I did not do any auto imports, just the folks I knew to be "networker types" but I also did not understand how the system operated and the email sent out. It is a major
flaw in this product which is a pity. This issue is being discussed in a number of online circles. Seems the company operates under the laws of Antigua, which seems like a major dodge to me. I have removed my email from visibility on the system".

"How to undo? I'll go peek at the software again to see how it works. I've also asked the guy who sent the link to me to see if he knows. He had the same problem as you.
Unfortunately, none of us caught the implications fast enough and, because we were sent the link from "trusted" sources probably weren't as skeptical as we should have been".

Several things bother me. My address lists are automatically captured by the software. The default position is to include all of the names on the mailing list in the list of contacts. Because it says add five names, it is not clear that I have to delete the existing list in order to "add" the five I want. While there are "warnings" about sending the contact list an email asking them to join, the sequences of the download doesnot make that easy until after you have created your contact list. They say that they do not keep the names and address but that would mean deleting them after the email is sent. If someone was capturing these lists a great deal of information could be mined. You don't give explicit permission to send the emails, the permission is assumed.

They claim to be offering free software but, of course, they can "upgrade" at a cost and I find this a little slimey.

I feel that an attempt was made at violating my privacy. I feel like a trust has been violated.

The owners say on their website that they draw inspiration from the research of Nobel Prize winner John Nash, who showed that 'by joining forces a group can reach a higher commutative value than by competing one with another. They believe that by combining all the connection trees into one global connections map, people will enhance the value from their own contacts'. This in turn will result in more friendships, respect for one another, and sharing.

I wonder what they mean by 'enhancing the value from ones own contacts'

I think this is ridiculous. This is really SPAM! The mailadresses are stolen in my opinion. Such a violation should be against the law.

Watch out Huminity spams your contacts you enter with
invites to join. You are not told this in downlaod etc

However inteface is quite interesting

Edited by author 01-28-2003 03:30 PM
I understood that not only Outlook, but also ICQ, AOL IM and Lotus Notes contact lists are optional to be imported in this network. Not the revelation of your contact list, but mainly the notification to all contacts (friends, business associates, vague acquaintances and 'quiet' enemies) can be a serious violation of ones privacy. This kind of networking is likely to harm peoples interest. I don't see any advantage of such a tree to be made public.