Contacts on what? Your comments makes it sound like it will use its authorization with a Google Account to send spam. And I just clicked the permission button 30 seconds before reading it.
More specifically: I connected to Quora using my Facebook account. When I connected, within the Quora system the message “Viliam is following your questions and answers” was sent to all Quora users who are also my Facebook contacts.
As far as I know, it didn’t do anything outside of Quora. But even this is kinda creepy. I discovered it when one of those users asked me in a FB message why exactly am I following his questions (in given context, it seemed like a rather creepy action by me). I didn’t even know what he was speaking about.
So the lesson is that if Quora later shows you announcements like: “XYZ is interested in your questions”, it most likely means that XYZ simply joined Quora, and Quora knows you two know each other. (Also, you can remove the people you are following in Quora settings. You probably didn’t even know you are “following” them, did you?)
I hate this kind of behavior, when social networks pretend their users have some activity among them, when in reality they don’t. But I generalize this suspicion to all software. Whenever some software tells me: “Your friend XYZ wants you to do this, or tells you that”, I always assume it is a lie. And if my friends XYZ really wants me to do something, they should tell me that using their own words outside of the system I don’t know. For example by phone, email, or facebook (not auto-generated) message.
Contacts on what? Your comments makes it sound like it will use its authorization with a Google Account to send spam. And I just clicked the permission button 30 seconds before reading it.
More specifically: I connected to Quora using my Facebook account. When I connected, within the Quora system the message “Viliam is following your questions and answers” was sent to all Quora users who are also my Facebook contacts.
As far as I know, it didn’t do anything outside of Quora. But even this is kinda creepy. I discovered it when one of those users asked me in a FB message why exactly am I following his questions (in given context, it seemed like a rather creepy action by me). I didn’t even know what he was speaking about.
So the lesson is that if Quora later shows you announcements like: “XYZ is interested in your questions”, it most likely means that XYZ simply joined Quora, and Quora knows you two know each other. (Also, you can remove the people you are following in Quora settings. You probably didn’t even know you are “following” them, did you?)
I hate this kind of behavior, when social networks pretend their users have some activity among them, when in reality they don’t. But I generalize this suspicion to all software. Whenever some software tells me: “Your friend XYZ wants you to do this, or tells you that”, I always assume it is a lie. And if my friends XYZ really wants me to do something, they should tell me that using their own words outside of the system I don’t know. For example by phone, email, or facebook (not auto-generated) message.