Identity / Profiles / Trust

Now this is interesting...Google apparently had to pull its 1 week old Click to Call service for a few hours as it was being abused for "prank" calls (I wonder if its the same people who try to flog me a new 'phone every night?).

Story on TechCrunch is here.

The service has apparently been reinstated now with more safeguards.

Now, what of all those eBay vendors that were supposed to revel in the Skype click to call?

Interesting though...in a free comms world, how do you prevent this...its like spam, as transaction costs drop to zero the temptation to voicespam is going to be very high. I have already seen stuff on Skype but very infrequent, but thats because you give your address out - if it is "out there" on a directory attached to your profile it will be quite a different thing.

Two very important points:

(i) There is clearly a "privacy limit" to what one can online....all business plans looking at Social Media comms need to look at the absuse issues more closely.

(ii) I think this shows yet again that privacy and security are not going to be OK, and its not the Netopia of happy, collaborative, collegiate experiences the early 'Netizens would like to see.