UNYK shortcomings

Recently I received a series of invitations to join UNYK, an interesting relationship site. Its focus is an automatically updated contact list: when your contacts update their details, your contact list is automatically updated, and vice-versa. Given the nature of the information, I was worried about privacy/confidentiality and data openness, so I did a little web search.

On the confidentiality issue, the UNYK Terms of Service states that UNYK reserves the right to modify or update its Terms of Service or Privacy Policy at any time and without prior notice. By using the site, you agree to all revisions or modifications. The confidentiality is supposedly “verified” by a company called TRUSTe. According to the Wikipedia, the TRUSTe president co-founded of Match.com, which bought Netclub, which was founded by the UNYK president. The TRUSTe article on Wikipedia links to two articles criticizing TRUSTe’s verifications, although the author admittedly works for the competition.

On the openness issue, I couldn’t find instructions on how to export contacts, e. g. as vCard. Besides, it seems that only UNYK users can be part of your contact list. According the the UNYK Privacy Policy, canceling your registration will delete all your information from UNYK and the address books of your contacts.

Since I bought my cellphone (a Nokia 2630), I back up my data systematically. Someday I’ll start synchronizing it to Evolution, but for now it’s good enough. I would adopt UNYK only if it made it easier, not harder, to keep other contact lists.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 17th, 2008 at 12:49 and is filed under Miscelânia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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5 Responses to “UNYK shortcomings”

  1. Luciana Fujii Pontello Says:
    August 17th, 2008 pm31 22:19

    They also store your password in plain text and send it to you by e-mail if you forget it. That’s really not a company you should rely on.

  2. Leonardo Fontenelle Says:
    August 18th, 2008 am31 07:55

    :D

  3. Agustin Batista Says:
    August 20th, 2008 pm31 13:14

    Thanks Leonardo and Luciana, I nearly subscribed.

  4. Sebastien Says:
    August 20th, 2008 pm31 17:18

    Hi Leonardo,

    Thanks for your comments on unyk. I would like to clarify a few points.

    Concerning the terms of use, we really tried to come with the best terms to protect unyk users and unyk.

    The TRUSTe certificate means that we are respecting high industry standards in terms of how we manage our user’s information. Trust me, there is absolutely no relation between netclub match and truste, I know, I founded netclub and unyk. We are just trying to provide a good service to our users.

    On the openness issue, we are all about openness. We think that your contacts are your contacts and you should be able to export them wherever you want. So if you go in your address book you will see that you can easily export some or all of your contacts in a csv file . We will have full sync capability with most address book and mobile phones in a near future.

    If you delete your account, we will not erase your information from your contacts address book, they will simply stop receiving your updates. But it’s a good point, thanks for mentioning it, it is a bug and we will fix it.

    For the password issue, we expect our users to change their password after they have received it but Luciana is right it is not top and we will upgrade our process.

    Stick with us, we have some great releases coming soon and we really want to make it easier for you to manage and access your contacts from wherever you want.

    Cheers

    Sebastien

  5. Leonardo Fontenelle | UNYK? Says:
    August 26th, 2008 pm31 18:52

    [...] Sebastien: Hi Leonardo, Thanks for your comments on unyk. I would like to clarify a few points. Concerning the terms… [...]

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