Would love to try this, but allowing access to all mail on my account is a deal breaker. The "It all takes just a few clicks. We never have access to your password." isn't enough for me to go past that fact -- who needs your password when you have all the emails now and in the future! (not to mention write emails on your behalf). I did check the FAQ, and although it does assure the reader only the headers are accessed, this is not enough.
I would use this only if the Google authorization checklist actually says this only access email headers, and then I would like to be able to limit the past time period of email accessed, and not give ongoing access.
Yeah, I feel the same way, even though I know one of the guys working on this. That said, I do think they have a great product, just wish there was a better way for them to get the information without needing all those permissions.
Could they write a small imap application that dumped the headers into simple json or what have you that we could then verify before submitting? I know it's not exactly user friendly, but it would make the people that care about security a lot happier.
So a site called 'conspire' assumes my mail is all in gmail and wants access to it so I can surveil the contacts of people I exchange messages with and their extended networks in turn? You couldn't make this up really. It seems more ethical and less creepy to hire private detectives at this point.
Accessing all my mail is a tough sell but allowing you to delete and send email on my behalf requires a lot more trust than you have built up thus far. That isn't to say I don't think this looks really cool and like a good idea, but that I am disappointed I can't try it out.
Can anyone from conspire comment on why it needs more than read-only access to your mail? From reading the privacy policy I gather that the reason might be because they are trying to actually protect people's privacy by not sharing the email address of the person they are emailing on your behalf. I'm not sure though, and if it is actually sending an email from an account that you own I don't see how they can hide that from you. They could delete the sent message to do a basic cover up but (I think) anyone who really wanted to know could probably find out the last email that was sent from their account. Then again if the messages are sent using their service as a middleman (more likely imho) then I'm still stumped as to why they need more than 'read only' access to my email.
Paul, Conspire co-founder and CTO, here. Thanks a lot for the feedback.
I understand granting "manage my email" access is a big step. Unfortunately, Gmail/Google Apps IMAP access is currently all-or-nothing. All we need to understand the network is read-only access to message headers--not including subject line--but we're forced to ask for everything.
Paul, while we have you here, a question: The obvious trope is that we are the product, that somehow Conspire will make money "off our backs".
I think it might alleviate some concerns if you shared at least some notion of how you intend to monetize, e.g., selling anonymized marketing data, and, perhaps more importantly, how you will NOT monetize, e.g., never offering "recruiter" plans where folks get access to our stuff for a fee.
You don't have to say what you will do, but knowing what you will NOT do may allay concerns.
We will not spam your contacts, sell your or your contacts' email addresses or personal data, or otherwise sell data about you to third parties.
Down the road, we will offer premium plans with professional search tools. An example use case is if you want to reach CIOs in northern California at companies greater than 100 people, we will identify those people and tell you the best person in your network to ask for an intro. At the moment, we're focused on growing the size of the network and making it valuable for users.
One other subtle point I wanted to mention: We don't expose email addresses via the product. The only people you can email are those for which you already have an email address. The same is true for people trying to contact you. So you won't get a bunch of spam recruiter emails.
This is great, the biggest weakness is there it's based on gmail so the value is limited unless one's entire network is on the service. If this was based on Twitter, all the data on who follows who is public and there's more immediate value. I regularly use methods like this for business development.
Seems very similar to Datahug, how is it different/better? While both services offer something compelling they both want full access to emails which isn't exactly necessary, I've done something similar looking at LinkedIn data.
I would use this only if the Google authorization checklist actually says this only access email headers, and then I would like to be able to limit the past time period of email accessed, and not give ongoing access.