Your Email Address is My Data
When Scoble tried to export his friend’s email addresses from Facebook (notice I didn’t say ‘ran a script to scrape other people’s personal data’) wasn’t he just trying to organise his address book? (See here also.)
I acually don’t quite agree with my title here. I just wanted to get your attention. My email address is my data not yours, but… if I approve you to be my friend on Facebook, I am giving you a personal. non-exclusive license to use that email address to contact me. You can move it to your phone, invite me to be your friend on Myspace, add it to your Exchange address book. Yes, you can even export it from Facebook. As part of our un-written, fair use contract you will not abuse that email address by using it as your own, publishing it to the web or otherwise making it available to spammers but non of that happens if you export it from Facebook.
Filed under Data Portability |One Response to “Your Email Address is My Data”
Leave a Reply
I am a proud co-founder of
This has to be by far the best explanation of the issue. The idea of granting a non-exclusive license is the most simple terms one can use to get others to understand and I think it is spot on.