Yahoo issued clarifications today regarding password security and third-party websites. Grouply welcomes these clarifications from Yahoo, as they reaffirm Grouply’s compliance with Yahoo’s Terms of Service and Groups Guidelines.

Yahoo acknowledges that it is not a TOS violation to provide your Yahoo password to a third-party site like Grouply. In fact, millions of users have provided their Yahoo passwords to third-party sites like Meebo, the instant messaging aggregator, and to wireless carriers such as T-Mobile so that they can read their Yahoo Mail on a mobile device. Providing your password to a third party site does carry risks, however, and users are advised to exercise caution when doing so.

Grouply uses your Yahoo password to collect your group list and group messages from the Yahoo Groups website. We do not use it to collect your photos, files, databases or any other group content, and we do not use it to access your Yahoo Mail or any other Yahoo service. When Yahoo provides an API for Yahoo Groups, which we understand is being worked on, then Grouply will no longer ask users to provide their Yahoo password.

Grouply protects your Yahoo password. Your password is encrypted and is accessible only by the Grouply application, not directly by a human. Grouply has been certified by TRUSTe, a leading advocate for consumer internet privacy. Click here for more on how Grouply protects your Yahoo password.

Grouply provides a number of features for group owners such as an automatic group newsletter, group statistics, most popular topics, and other interesting summaries. Grouply Social helps build community in the group. Grouply’s time-saving features like the Smart Digest improve member satisifaction. However, Grouply respects the right of a group owner to determine whether Grouply is suitable for her group. Grouply recently released Grouply Owner Controls to give group owners the ability to block their group from Grouply in less than a minute and without providing any personal information.

Grouply understands the privacy of group messages and incorporates strict controls to ensure that privacy is maintained. Third-party websites like Gmail and inbox.com include controls to ensure that the Yahoo Groups messages you forward to them are not available to other users. Similarly, Grouply prevents other users from seeing your group messages. To see a group’s messages in Grouply, you must be a member of the group. You cannot see any messages in Grouply that you couldn’t see when logged in to the Yahoo Groups website. Click here for more on how Grouply protects your group messages.

We at Grouply look forward to continuing to serve our users and improving the Grouply service.

UPDATE: We are pleased to report that you can now use Grouply without providing your Yahoo password!

This entry was posted on Friday, February 15th, 2008 at 11:50 pm and is filed under Company.