Thursday, September 29, 2011

Naff off Localist

I've never been shy about my dislike of Yellow. And Yellow Locals is, in my opinion, a waste of time and money (yet again) which should have been spent on their website.

Anyway, this is not about Yellow, it's about Localist. Yes. NZ Post's own little directory. I have issues with Localist too - their Auckland directories (all 4 or 5 of them) are scheduled to be published TWICE a year and they wouldn't bundle the advertising across all directories; So if you are a regional advertiser rather than a local advertiser, there were no economies of scale for advertising across all 4/5 books. Granted, they may have changed this, but I wouldn't know as the rep hasn't been in since I told him I thought it was a waste of time for my client.

Anyway, that is not what got my back up. Below is what has got me miffed:

Someone asked me to log in and vote for their friend for something and when I saw I could log in with my twitter (or FB or 4square) I thought, "that's pretty rad! Makes life easy. OK, I'll sign in with Twitter!"


Ha! No I freaking won't! Apparently...


This application will be able to:

  • Read Tweets from your timeline (okay, not so bad)
  • See who you follow, and follow new people (I'm hoping when they say 'follow new people they mean them and not me?!?)
  • Update your profile (You're going to be able to do WHAT!?)
  • Post tweets for you (No. No you crazy MF. You will not be posting tweets for me.)
Before you start with 'Monica, you're such an idiot, it just means that they can post one of those "@iChild likes Localist" type tweets' I get that that is probably the case, but it's not specific. If it said, 'Post tweets for you with your permission' I'd be OK with that, but, especially with all the privacy issues going on with FB at the moment, there is no way I am opening up my communication channels any more than I already have.

You crazy Localist. This has just confirmed to me that I want nothing to with this organisation. Protect your accounts people! Remember than you can remove application permissions. Log in to Twitter, go:
Settings > Applications. You might be surprised what's lurking in there.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi Monica

Thanks for your feedback.

For the record, I'd like clarify a few things on behalf of Localist.

When we use Twitter to log you in or register on www.localist.co.nz we have to conform to the Twitter authentication rules. The screenshot that you display above is actually from their website, not ours.

It's the same permissions everyone agrees to when they use other services that also use Twitter sign up. For example, Twitpic and yfrog both have exactly that same page presented to you if you want to post photos to Twitter.

Completely agree that the bit about "post tweets for you" should really have - with your permission", but we can't control that content and Twitter makes all the rules there.

To make it clear, we won't post to your twitter account or Facebook without you knowing first. We have some further info about this at https://www.localist.co.nz/p/aucklanders/social-media-login

Also completely agree with your comments about protecting your privacy and online accounts, which is why you can register directly on our website without having to connect to Twitter and Facebook.

Finally, in response to customer feedback, we now allow advertisers to benefit from reduced rates for advertising when taking ads in multiple Localist guides.

I hope that clears things up a bit for you. If you've got any other questions, please get in touch with me at tineke.bright@localist.co.nz.

Thanks
Tineke