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Someone is spreading false anti-Grouply rumors in one of my groups. What should I do?
I heard that Grouply is a spammer, a phisher, an identity thief, and other bad things.
Is Grouply in violation of copyright laws or Yahoo’s Terms of Service?
Does Grouply claim copyright ownership of the messages that appear on Grouply?
How does Grouply protect the confidentiality of my group messages?
If Grouply is free, then how will you make money?
How does Grouply protect my privacy?
How does Grouply protect my Yahoo password?
Does Grouply send out invitations on my behalf without my permission?
I received an invitation to join Grouply. Where did that come from?
How can I prevent people from sending me invitations to join Grouply?
How can I find out more about Grouply without signing up?
What if I want to disconnect some or all of my groups from Grouply or delete my account altogether?
I am the owner of a group, and I would like to prevent members from posting invitations to Grouply.
I do not want my group members to use Grouply to access a group that I own. What do I do?

Someone is spreading false anti-Grouply rumors in one of my groups. What should I do?

Certainly everyone is entitled to their opinion about what constitutes a useful internet service. Unfortunately, sometimes the line is crossed, and several Grouply users have reported encountering anti-Grouply postings in their groups with false statements being presented as facts, not opinions. Examples include:

  • “Grouply automatically spams everyone in the group”
  • “Grouply is a phisher and an identity thief”
  • “Grouply makes private group information public”
  • “Grouply is a scam”

Spreading false rumors (see I heard that Grouply is a spammer for more examples) puts the author and the entire group at risk. Yahoo’s Terms of Service (TOS) prohibits “mak[ing] available any Content that is … defamatory … [or] libelous…”. Yahoo has shut down user accounts or entire groups when the TOS is violated.

If you encounter any defamatory statements about Grouply, you might want to remind the group owner about Yahoo’s TOS and point them to http://blog.grouply.com/protect/ for “the facts” about Grouply.

I heard that Grouply is a spammer, a phisher, an identity thief, and other bad things.

With Grouply we are trying to address the issues that members and owners of email lists and online groups have been reporting for a long time. We want you to love Grouply! Unfortunately, a number of false rumors have spread about Grouply on various Yahoo Groups and blogs. Here is an example of one negative posting along with our response to it. As you can see, much of what is written is pure speculation by people who have never tried Grouply! An episode of the Alternageek Tech Show podcast discussed and debunked the negative rumors about Grouply (discussion begins at 41:50). In fact, tens of thousands of people are safely enjoying Grouply today. Here are some more facts about Grouply:

1. Grouply is not a spammer.

People are typically referring to the invitations that enthusiastic Grouply users are sending to their groups. Grouply reminds users not to post invitations in groups that do not allow them, and Grouply prevents invitations from being sent to a given group that has already been told about Grouply recently. In addition, group owners can prevent invitations from being sent to their groups altogether.

2. Grouply is not a phisher or an identity thief.

You have the option to provide Grouply with your Yahoo username and password as part of the registration process in order to automatically setup your Grouply account. Your Yahoo password is carefully protected and is used only to discover your group list and retrieve your group messages. It is not used to access your Yahoo Mail or anything else. If you are not comfortable providing your Yahoo password, you can leave that field blank and set up your Grouply account manually. It’s completely up to you.

Like MySpace, Facebook, and Yahoo Groups, Grouply will make money through advertising. Grouply is an established company with highly regarded investors and advisors.

3. Grouply does not publish your group messages to a wider audience

Grouply is basically a “smart” email reader, specially designed for reading messages from online groups. Instead of forwarding group messages to your Gmail or Yahoo Mail account, group members send their messages to Grouply and read them there. Like any email application, Grouply maintains the privacy of your messages .  Members can’t read a group’s messages on Grouply unless they belong to the group.

4. Grouply maintains group member privacy

Grouply users have the option to share information about themselves in Grouply, but they are in complete control over who sees what. Grouply does not collect or expose any information about group members who are not Grouply users.

5. Grouply does not “take over” your group or put your group at risk.

When a person joins Grouply, he has the option (but not the requirement) to provide Grouply with his Yahoo username and password to assist in process of setting up his Grouply account. The password is only used to determine the user’s list of groups and possibly to collect group messages for him to read. Grouply does not use the user’s Yahoo password to copy the group’s databases or photos. Importantly, having one member’s password does not give Grouply any “super powers” to do anything with the group that the member could not do in Yahoo Groups before. For instance, Grouply cannot copy member email addresses or passwords or “take over” the group. This is simply not possible with a single member’s password.

6. Grouply complies with Yahoo’s Terms of Service

Yahoo recently confirmed that it is not a TOS violation to provide your Yahoo password to a third-party site like Grouply. And now you can use Grouply like any other email service without providing your Yahoo password!

7. Grouply does not claim copyright ownership to your messages on Grouply

The person who created the message holds the copyright to it. As stated in our Terms of Service, Grouply’s copyright is limited to the components of the website itself (e.g., logos and labels) and the communications services provided the Grouply.

We would really appreciate if you help spread the facts if you hear the rumors. If you have any additional questions or concerns, please contact us at support@grouply.com .

No. As explained on our Product page, Grouply is basically an enhanced email service like Gmail, America Online, and Yahoo Mail. Like these email services, Grouply is in compliance with copyright laws and Yahoo’s TOS. In addition, Yahoo recently confirmed that it is not a TOS violation to provide your Yahoo password to a third-party site like Grouply. And very soon you will be able to use Grouply like any other email service without providing your Yahoo password!

Grouply is not a blog. Messages in Grouply are not published for all the world to see. Like Gmail, Grouply controls access to messages and ensures you can see only what you are supposed to. When you log into Gmail, you cannot see your friend’s inbox. Similarly, when you log into Grouply, you cannot see messages for groups you do not belong to. Grouply is simply delivering messages to you that you already have permission to read.

Absolutely not! The person who created the message holds the copyright to it. As stated in our Terms of Service, Grouply’s copyright is limited to the components of the website itself (e.g., logos and labels) and the communications services provided the Grouply.

How does Grouply protect the confidentiality of my group messages?

As part of Grouply’s service to provide a better interface to your existing online groups, Grouply offers you the ability to post and read group messages on the Grouply website. Grouply, like Gmail and all email-reading systems, has a security mechanism to ensure that you get to see only the messages you are supposed to. You must be a member of a given group in order to see that group’s messages in Grouply. This restriction applies to Grouply employees as well. A Grouply employee cannot access a group’s messages unless he belongs to the group.

Grouply and Gmail differ slightly in how they control access to group messages. Whereas Gmail will let you see all the messages associated with all the groups that you ever belonged to, Grouply will let you see only messages for the groups that you currently belong to. To accomplish this, Grouply collects your list of groups from Yahoo each time you login to Grouply. In fact, the main reason we ask for your Yahoo username and password when you register is so that we can ensure that your group membership information in Grouply is current.

If Grouply is free, then how will you make money?

Grouply makes money through online advertising. It’s the exact same business model employed by sites like MySpace, Facebook, Gmail, and even Yahoo and Google Groups. As you read messages and interact with your online community on Grouply, we will project relevant and unobtrusive ads to you. For now we are focusing on building a strong and satisfied user base, so we haven’t yet made it a priority to incorporate ads on the Grouply site. Grouply will never spam users with email advertisements.

How does Grouply protect my privacy?

As with many social sites, Grouply gives you the option to enter and make available to others some personal information about yourself such as your name, contact information, and the list of groups you belong to. With Grouply’s advanced privacy controls, you decide who can access your profile page and what they see when they get there. Keep your list of groups and friends private if you like. Share your home address only with your friends and select groups. Share with your fellow group members the list of conversations you found interesting — or don’t. It’s all up to you. Grouply is certified by TRUSTe, an independent advocate of consumer internet privacy. For more information, please see our Privacy Policy.

How does Grouply protect my Yahoo password?

You do not need to provide your Yahoo password to use Grouply. When you register with Grouply, you can leave the Yahoo ID and Yahoo Password fields empty, and Grouply will lead you through the Manual Setup process. Though the Manual Setup option does not require a Yahoo password, it will take you a few more minutes to configure your Yahoo Groups settings to use Grouply. Users who are comfortable with providing their Yahoo password to Grouply benefit from faster setup and can also take advantage of Grouply’s Web Connect feature.

Grouply understands the sensitivity of your passwords for other systems and handles them with great care. Your Yahoo password is used only to connect your Yahoo Groups to Grouply. Grouply does not use your password to access Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Finance, or any other Yahoo sites. Your Yahoo password is encrypted and can be read only by the Grouply application, not directly by a human.

There are many examples of popular websites and products that request sensitive information from you in order to provide you added value. For example:

  • You provide your Yahoo, Google, AOL, and Hotmail usernames and passwords to Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Friendster, Flickr, and every other “social site” so that they can access your webmail system and find people you know who are on the site;
  • You provide your Yahoo, Google, and AOL usernames and passwords to your mobile phone carrier so you can access all your emails from these services on your Blackberry;
  • You provide your Yahoo, Google, and AOL usernames and passwords to sites like Meebo so you can access all of your instant messaging (chat) accounts from one place;
  • Sites like Mint go further and ask for your bank account information to help you track your financial assets;
  • And of course, millions of people provide their credit card info online to make purchases every day.

All of this is part of growing trend for openness and information sharing among web applications to provide advanced applications and services to consumers. The most important action you can take as a consumer is to ensure that the company requesting your sensitive information has the proper safety and privacy mechanisms in place to avoid compromising your information. At Grouply, we do! Grouply was recently certified by TRUSTe, an independent advocate of consumer internet privacy.

Does Grouply send out invitations on my behalf without my permission?

Absolutely not!

Grouply — like many other social sites such as Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and Yahoo Groups — offers you the ability to invite people you are “connected to” (e.g., contacts, friends, fellow group members) to join you on the site. You send out the invitations yourself through a process involving several button clicks. Grouply never sends invitations on your behalf without your consent.

For example, to invite some of your contacts to Grouply, you start by entering your username and password for a webmail account (e.g., Hotmail). Grouply then displays a list of your webmail contacts who are not using Grouply. Show me

From this list, you can select the people you would like to invite to Grouply. If you click the blue Invite to Grouply button, Grouply will send out your invitations to the people you selected. If you do not want to send any invitations, just click “skip”. This process is virtually identical to the “friend finder” processes on LinkedIn, Facebook, and other sites. Grouply also gives you the opportunity to invite fellow group members to Grouply via a similar process.

We try to make it as clear as possible to the user what is going on when they are sending invitations. Unfortunately, though, every so often someone sends invitations unintentionally, and sometimes they aren’t even aware they did it. Here’s a blog posting where the author describes how this happened to him.

If you have any feedback on how to make this process clearer, please let us know!

I received an invitation to join Grouply. Where did that come from?

Any invitation to join Grouply would have come from an ethusiastic Grouply user who wants you to benefit from Grouply as they have! Like many internet sites, Grouply offers a mechanism for existing users to invite others to join. Grouply provides default invitation text that the user can modify if they want, but many users choose to stick with the default. This would explain why you may have seen multiple similar-looking invitations. If this is the case, then you have lots of friends who want you to try Grouply!

We want to stress that any invitations you receive asking you to try Grouply are initiated and sent by your friends or fellow group members, not by Grouply. As stated in our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service, Grouply would never send out a message on behalf of a user that the user did not initiate.

How can I prevent people from sending me invitations to join?

Grouply maintains a “do not send” list, and invitations cannot be sent to email addresses on the list. Every invitation to join Grouply comes with an link in the footer that you can click to be added to the “do not send” list. Or you can just go to http://www.grouply.com/unsubscribe.php to add your email address directly to the list.

How can I find out more about Grouply without signing up?

To find out more about Grouply, take a tour!

What if I want to disconnect some or all of my groups from Grouply or delete my account altogether?

You can update or delete your Grouply account yourself from within Grouply. Your first step is to login to Grouply at www.grouply.com . If you do not remember your Grouply ID and password, try your Yahoo ID and password first. If that does not work, you can reset your password at http://www.grouply.com/pass_reset.php .

You can use Grouply to access and interact with just a subset of your groups if you want. Go to Settings > Update Group Access. Under Access via Grouply, select “No” for any groups you do not want to access via Grouply, then click Save.

If you want to stop receiving Smart Digests, go to Settings > Manage Email Subscriptions.

You can update your privacy settings to limit what people see when they view your Grouply profile. For example, you can control who can see your friends list, who can send you messages, and what groups show up in your groups list. To update Privacy settings, go to Settings > Manage Your Privacy Settings.

To delete your Grouply account entirely, go to Settings > Discontinue Using Grouply.

I am the owner of a group, and I would like to prevent members from posting invitations to Grouply.

Grouply has a feature like “tell a friend” that enables users to invite their fellow group members to Grouply.  Grouply imposes a number of controls on this feature to prevent abuse:

  • Only about 20-40 members of a group can be invited at a time.
  • A specific email address or group cannot be invited more than once in a short period of time.
  • All invitations include an “unsubscribe” link in the footer so than any recipient can opt-out of receiving future invites.

In addition, a group owner can prevent Grouply invitations from being sent to his group or group members altogether.  The process takes only about a minute to complete and includes a security step to verify that you are the owner of the group.  The process does not require that you register for Grouply or provide any personal information.

  1. Go to http://www.grouply.com/owner_controls.php, type in your group name, and click Send Email.
  2. An email containing an Owner Authorization Code (OAC) is sent to your group’s owner address. (All of the owners and moderators of your group will receive this email, so you should let them know that you sent it!) Open this email and copy the OAC to your clipboard using Ctrl-C or the “copy” command.
  3. Return to the Owner Access Controls page. If the page does not display Enter Owner Authorization Code for Grouply Access Controls, then go to http://www.grouply.com/owner_controls.php?c=1 .
  4. Paste the Owner Authorization Code into the box and click Submit. You are taken to the Owner Controls page for your group.
  5. Under “Blocking Grouply Invitations”, select “Never” and click Save.

Grouply users will no longer be able to invite your group or group members to Grouply.  You will receive an email confirming your change.  You can also return to the Owner Access Controls page (step 3 above) and note that the Blocking Grouply Invitations button is still set to “Never”.

I do not want my group members to use Grouply to access a group that I own. What do I do?

A group owner can completely block his group from being accessed through Grouply.  The process takes only about a minute to complete and includes a security step to verify that you are the owner of the group.  The process does not require that you register for Grouply or provide any personal information.

  1. Go to http://www.grouply.com/owner_controls.php, type in your group name, and click Send Email.
  2. An email containing an Owner Authorization Code (OAC) is sent to your group’s owner address. (All of the owners and moderators of your group will receive this email, so you should let them know that you sent it!) Open this email and copy the OAC to your clipboard using Ctrl-C or the “copy” command.
  3. Return to the Owner Access Controls page. If the page does not display Enter Owner Authorization Code for Grouply Access Controls, then go to http://www.grouply.com/owner_controls.php?c=1 .
  4. Paste the Owner Authorization Code into the box and click Submit. You are taken to the Owner Controls page for your group.
  5. At the bottom of the page, click “Advanced options”.
  6. Under Group Access, select “No – Block my group members from being able to access this group in Grouply” and click Save.

Your group is now blocked from Grouply.  Current Grouply users will no longer be able to use Grouply to access your group. Group members who join Grouply in the future will not be able to start using Grouply for the group.

You will receive an email confirming your change.  You can also return to the Owner Access Controls page (step 3 above) and note that the Group Access button is still set to “No”.

To re-enable access to a group you previously blocked, repeat steps 1 to 4 above, select Enable on the Set Grouply Access Controls for Your Group page and click Save.