I've never liked Mint.com. Not because they're bad at what they do (they're not), but because you have to give them too much access to take advantage of it. So you get a little money management help, so what? You have to give away your password to do it. Not only that, Mint is (surprise, surprise) using all that juicy data you provide for their own purposes.

For now, it seems that they're not actually telling you who purchased what, but there's no telling when and if they'll start selling your valuable personal data to 3rd parties. Until then, showing truly anonymous purchase information is kind of neat so long as they don't take it further than that.

A completely horrifying service that some people have actually signed up for.

When you first hear about Blippy, the purchase-sharing website, you would think that no one in the whole world would be crazy enough to sign up. You’d be wrong.

Blippy is a service where you can share your purchases on most of the major web stores in real time (similar to Twitter). ALF just got a movie at Netflix (Full Metal Jacket… classic!). Jessestay just bought something at iTunes for 2.99 ( Epitaph One, by Dollhouse). On and on the purchases go. As they scroll by, I learn more about where the people live, what kinds of things they like, and what kinds of secrets they have. One user just purchased an iPhone app to find, let’s say, non-traditional bars in his city.

Believe it or not, the complete transparency of your purchasing habits is the least of your worries on Blippy. This site, supposedly run by four average sounding college graduates, promises good security and protection of your information, but history shows that even major banks and government agencies are hard pressed to keep data safe. Especially if they’re a big target!

So what makes Blippy a big target? Well, you may have heard my advice not too long ago to never give away your e-mail address password to these new sites like Facebook and Twitter that use your address book to add friends automatically. Blippy does the same thing, but for your web stores AND your bank accounts too!

In case you missed it, let me say it again more clearly: Blippy gets their information of your purchases by logging into your iTunes, Netflix, or eBay accounts and constantly monitoring them for new purchases. And not just web stores, but banks and credit cards too. Bank of America, Citibank, Chase, Paypal, and American Express are just some of the ones they’re set up for currently. All you have to do is provide all your usernames and passwords for each service you want to share your purchases for with Blippy.

You don’t have to be a privacy nut like me to find that prospect completely horrifying.

(Image used under: Creative Commons 2.0 [SRC])

This is so wrong, I barely know what to say. I sure hope this trend doesn't start to catch on, because a lot of people would give up the information when they're pressured instead of doing the right thing and refusing.

"Please list any and all, current personal or business websites, web pages or memberships on any Internet-based chat rooms, social clubs or forums, to include, but not limited to: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, YouTube.com, MySpace, etc." the form reads. But Bozeman isn't simply interested in finding out where to look for potentially embarrassing personal details; the city wants full disclosure, since the form demands username and password information for each.

This is way worse than all those sickening social networking sites asking for your e-mail address password.

Update

Here is the contact information for the relevant people in the city if you want to ask them why they thought this would be a good idea. And just in case someone were to change the form, here's a copy of the original found on their website:

This is for real... they actually expect you to give up your account details!

(Image is used under the Pixabay license)

Reunion.com is using a deceptive marketing strategy where they pretend to be someone you know who is inviting you to Reunion. If you go to Reunion.com to see who it is, sign up, and make the horrible gross mistake of giving them your e-mail address password, they will automatically send out false e-mails to all the people in your contact list.

Two things are going horribly wrong here. One is that Reunion.com is using false and deceptive practices and is doing nothing less than what a virus or hacker would do. I hope the hammer of law hits them hard and fast

The second thing is that people somehow believe it's ok to give up their e-mail address password which is a huge no no.