OSNews > Thread > "RE: gravatar? bah, data mining" by Adam S

Linked by Adam S on Thu 8th Oct 2009 18:56 UTC

OSnews is in the process of converting our self-hosted avatars to Gravatar.com, a global recognized avatar service hosted by Automattic, the team behind Wordpress publishing platform and Wordpress.com. Effective immediately, we've disallowed uploads of new OSnews avatars. Please consider registering a gravatar to use a personalized account picture on OSnews.com.

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RE: gravatar? bah, data mining

by Adam S on Fri 9th Oct 2009 13:53 UTC in reply to "gravatar? bah, data mining"

Member since:
2005-04-01

Could OSnews _please_ remove the statement "OSNews does not share this address with any third party and does not display it publically" from the preferences page? It's not true anymore, after all.

I'm sorry, but this is PATENTLY false, and it is the perfect example of what we in this industry call "FUD."

We put an md5 encrypted string in a the source code. We do not share your email address. Currently, you will need a cluster of servers to reverse encrypt that: if you're willing to gain those resources to harvest my email address, please just see my profile and save yourself the energy.

The gravatar people are just doing a string comparison: if the encrypted hash matches an encrypted hash they have, they present the avatar.

Please take your whining elsewhere, since it's based on what amounts to lie.

Once again: we do NOT share your email address.

Reply Parent Bookmark Score: 2

RE[2]: gravatar? bah, data mining

by Invincible Cow on Fri 9th Oct 2009 21:14 in reply to "RE: gravatar? bah, data mining"

Member since:
2006-06-24

"The gravatar people are just doing a string comparison: if the encrypted hash matches an encrypted hash they have, they present the avatar."

And they have my email address, even though I never gave it to them.

You may not give my email address away, but you're endorsing a service that obviously does not care about privacy.

And there is no reason why anyone would want the same avatar for different sites, it's just completely nonsense. If I was interested in operating systems and cats, I definetely wouldn't want the same avatar on os forums and cat forums.

And md5 is not an encryption, that's just a word that's (wrongly) used to make it sound safe.

Reply Parent Bookmark Score: 1

RE[3]: gravatar? bah, data mining

by Adam S on Fri 9th Oct 2009 21:42 in reply to "RE[2]: gravatar? bah, data mining"

Member since:
2005-04-01

No. You are wrong. Unless you register, they do not have your email address.

Reply Parent Bookmark Score: 1