What we do – and don’t do – with your address book
UPDATE: All users, freemium and premium, can now choose wether we send confirmation emails.
In this period of AddressBookGate, we find it necessary to fully explain what we do – and don’t do – with your address book:
- We do not copy any information from your address book.
- We do not download your address book.
- We do not cache any information on our servers in any manner whatsoever.
However, from time to time some of your contacts may receive an email from us.
Here is why:
When we detect a contact in an email that you have received, we sometimes send an email to this contact to see if he/she wants to validate their details. You will find an example of this confirmation email later in this post.
- In Premium Mode, you have the option of whether or not to activate this feature.
- For Freemium Users, this feature is automatically enabled.
We make sure to send only one email confirmation request per year per email contact, at most.
We want to be as clear as possible in our communication to you. However, if you have any questions about any of these points, please don’t hesitate to send me an email at laval@kwaga.com or post on this post.
Thank you,
Philippe
Confirmation email example
(Version française)
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A good friend of mine, Eric Archer, and good friend of you I guess (Philip), talk about you and your company here, in Granada.
He thinks, as I do after reading your Web, than our language analyzer will be very usefull to integrate into your application to undestand the meaning of the e-mails.
There is a brief description in You Tube, in http://youtu.be/2xW61qMth-I
And in other videos in VICTOR Translator channel.
If you share mi opinion, let’s talk about it.
Thanks for the comment, Fernando. The video you’ve shared is very interesting. It seems like you and Philippe have been in contact and we look forward to hearing more from you. Best, Brad
This is very interesting, You’re a very skilled blogger. I have joined your feed and look forward to seeking more of your magnificent post. Also, I have shared your web site in my social networks!
Thanks for the kind reply, Jordan. Your site actually doesn’t lead anywhere… are you a robot? We like robots too 😉
[…] Le principe de fonctionnement repose sur analyse sémantique du contenu des messages reçus. En connectant votre adresse de messagerie au service, vous permettez aux serveurs de WriteThat.name de parser vos messages pour en extraire les informations qui vont mettre à jour votre carnet d’adresse. Les systèmes de connexion sont sécurisés (OAuth dans le cas de Google, SSL pour Outlook et Lotus Notes) mais certains peuvent hésiter à franchir pas. A ces réticences, l’éditeur répond que le volume d’information traité exclu de facto un traitement “humain” et également qu’aucun des messages analysés n’est conservé. Suite aux différentes “affaires” de carnet d’adresses exploités par d’autres éditeurs, Kwaga a rédigé un post “your address book belongs to you”. […]
[…] (You’ve consented by using the service.) As the company CEO Philippe Laval explains via blog post, “from time to time some of your contacts may receive an email from […]
[…] (You’ve consented by using the service.) As the company CEO Philippe Laval explains via blog post, “from time to time some of your contacts may receive an email from […]
[…] (You’ve consented by using the service.) As the company CEO Philippe Laval explains via blog post, “from time to time some of your contacts may receive an email from […]
[…] (You’ve consented by using the service.) As the company CEO Philippe Laval explains via blog post, “from time to time some of your contacts may receive an email from […]
[…] consent. (You’ve consented by using the service.) As the company CEO Philippe Laval explains via blog post, “from time to time some of your contacts may receive an email from […]
[…] bit of negative buzz on TechCrunch and this got us to understand that, while we’re seeing the confirmation emails as a mostly win-win feature, this was not the case for everyone. This buzz, coming after glowing […]
[…] (You’ve consented by using the service.) As the company CEO Philippe Laval explains via blog post, “from time to time some of your contacts may receive an email from […]
[…] consent. (You’ve consented by using the service.) As the company CEO Philippe Laval explains via blog post, “from time to time some of your contacts may receive an email from […]
[…] (You’ve consented by using the service.) As the company CEO Philippe Laval explains via blog post, “from time to time some of your contacts may receive an email from […]
[…] (You’ve consented by using the service.) As the company CEO Philippe Laval explains via blog post, “from time to time some of your contacts may receive an email from […]
[…] (You’ve consented by using the service.) As the company CEO Philippe Laval explains via blog post, “from time to time some of your contacts may receive an email from […]
[…] consent. (You’ve consented by using the service.) As the company CEO Philippe Laval explains via blog post, “from time to time some of your contacts may receive an email from […]
sorry, contacting adress book contacts is a DON’T
I got recently this email by you. I am not a user of writethat.name.
Stop contacting contacts for advertising your service!
Stop storing/collecting personal data w/o consent of the concerned person.
Disable this feature by default for all of your users!
Or you will receive the same shitstorm as facebook got when they used the adress books of their users.
Thanks for reaching out and sharing your feedback.
This service is indeed off by default for all users since this post a year and a half ago, so it is only users that specifically request for their new contacts’ information to be “confirmed” that have this email sent out.
Thanks Brad for your immediate response.
I got such a message yesterday. Does that mean someone has turned this feature on intentionally?!
Even if he did. It is not HIS/HERS “right” to do so and it is not yours to use it.
Due to the fact that I did not know who is using your service (no reference in your email) I am even unable to make the person who distributed my personal data aware of this issue. I can just recommend to you and writethat.name: do not collect data and use it for “unwanted” email advertisement.
My pleasure. It’s important for us to have user and non-user feedback so thank you.
Yes, I confirm that the user would have manually chosen to send this email to everyone whose information is updated in their address book. That being said, we do not “use” this information in any other way than this single confirmation email if it’s what our users what. You can read more about our privacy agreement here: https://www.writethat.name/privacy/
We’ve considered “personalizing” the email so that it comes from the user, but haven’t found the time to develop that yet. If the email had come from your contact, would you have preferred that?
If I am PRO to your service: YES, it would substantial increase trust in your service.
If I am CON, I would contact him, give him a hard time and ask him to think about it before spreading personal data for datamining or marketing purposes and not telling me in advance. This might save others.
So personalizing, increases transparency/trust and reduces complaints.
If careful handling with personal data gets more common amongst your customers because you support. You will benefit…Data handling is a question of trust…
ah…and btw…privacy policies are less important than trust.
Thank you and I will share this with the team. I really do appreciate your feedback and will update here if this change goes into production. Cheers, Brad
Google…
Usually posts some very fascinating stuff like this. If you are new to this site….