Cut the IT boys some slack

Many otherwise intelligent social networking fans have been taken in by an outfit called Quechup. They receive messages from their pals inviting them to join "the social networking platform sweeping the globe". When my first invite arrived a few days ago from Hugh Macleod, of Gaping Void fame, I was immediately suspicious. I have huge respect for Hugh's talents and we rub along reasonably well when we meet, but we're not what you might call friends.

Instead of signing up, I dropped him a note. His reply was, well, abject. A couple of days later, I got an invite from the equally well-known and respected Euan Semple. Same thing.

Something was amiss. And it was very simple. Quechup asks for a password to your email accounts so that it can, essentially, pretend to be you. It does it by saying "see what friends are already in Quechup" but it actually takes your entire list and emails it.

This could prove something of a turning point for uncritical enthusiasm for social networking. We're so used to seeing 'good' organisations handle our trust with the respect we expect, we forget that not everyone plays by these unwritten rules. Perhaps the calculation is that greed pays - collecting millions of email addresses is worth brassing off a few hundred thousand people. They have to be wrong.

All this was happening as the San Francisco based Office 2.0 conference was about to take place. There, some caution was urged by corporate types who reminded delegates that, while social software was all very nice, regulation was very real and, in many companies, a proper audit trail of customer contact is needed. Casual instant messaging conversations are not usually captured for posterity. A good point and one that was, in all probability, lost on the many gung-ho 'social is good, corporate is bad' members of the audience.

We might moan about corporate IT and its concerns. But it's their job to protect the organisation from unnecessary digital exposure. Quechup is a timely reminder that not everyone in the social networking world is as nice as its advocates would have you believe.