Webmail has launched a free blogging platform for its users (http://blog.wm.co.za/). While this is a great effort at increasing blogging in South Africa it is also a huge security and spam risk. The implementation of this blogging system is completely unsafe for any Webmail user.
Webmail have decided not to use the traditional user name system by default, which allows users to be identified by a nickname (pseudonym). They have decided to display users email addresses in full public view! How is this a bad thing? Let me elaborate. Spam! We all hate spam. It clutters our inboxes and wastes our bandwidth. Thanks to Webmail displaying your email address all over the their blogging system and in the URL, you are now at an even greater risk of receiving spam.
- eMail Harvesting
The internet is filled with preprogrammed robots (bots) which search through page after page looking for email addresses to download and add to a database. Once your email address is in one of these databases you are more than likely to receive spam. - eMarketers
If you’re really sly and want to build up your email database, visit Webmail’s new blogging platform and collect as many addresses as you can before they fix this. It’s unethical, so I wouldn’t recommend it.
How one of South Africa’s leading internet portals could allow this to happen is beyond me. Blogging is pretty simple, implementation however is not. Large scale blogging platforms need to be implemented with care and managed correctly. This is very careless. All Webmail users, please DO NOT sign-up for this blogging service, until your safety and privacy is deemed to be handled in a safe manor.
P.S. Note how Telkom’s DO campaign appears on the main page of this blogging system, great move Telkom Media. I now see how you plan to use social media to your advantage, or not.
Screenshots: (email addresses blocked for user’s privacy and protection)
Yeah it all seems rather weird that they would paste the email addresses all over their users blogs. Although who uses Webmail as a mail client anyway these days when you have Yahoo and GMail ruling the roost (and c’mon, you can’t miss them)? I’ve only ever used my webmail account/address for not-to-be-trusted web sign-ups.
Wezzo: Yeah I agree, GMail is king for me. Live Mail and Yahoo Mail are also still big players. I guess Webmail have been around for a long time, it might be hard to existing users to switch. I would hope to see Webmail step their service a little more to reflect the new international standards.
Hah! Thats crazy bro! Its sooo buggy aswell..
Webmail is such a dodgey company, their ad sales staff are blood hounds!
Ja, well, no, fine. Telkom advertises on their site, so what can you expect?! It is incredibly stupid though… for the life of me, why don’t they simply implement an open source solution and get people used to a more serious blogging platform?
I have to, to a certain extend agree that Webmail does have it’s shortcomings however you can’t argue facts, Webmail is the most visited website in SA, and still the fastest. You will be surprised as to who uses Webmail, MD’s , CEO’s, Doctors and off course a huge student base as well. Webmail also has a 10gig filesharing space per subscriber, which is currently more than a million subscribers. Have any of you Tech-Savvy experts tried to advise Webmail on thier serious oversight conserning the blogging?