What’s the big deal? How about the annoyance to the people whose details have been exposed and clear data protection law breaches? It’s one thing Internet Explorer hogging memory, but other people’s data remains other people’s data and should always be treated as such. It’s the ONE thing you get right before going live and make sure you test when you make changes.

I am afraid it is the sort of shoulder shrugging laxness you are seeming to support which leads to such cock-ups. Inevitably it is never the lazy coder who is the victim of such slackness though, is it?

All said, this is unusual to see from Ecademy. There is much to should at the Powers about, but poor user privacy has never been one of them in the five years I have been on tthe site.

Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz

Mr Not Ecademy – I too trawled through a few of the messages, and the vast majority were indeed requests for deletion.

Anyone who looks at their content will know that claims of hundreds of thousands of members are ridiculous. The active, contributing members would be in the tens, maybe low hundreds.

Sigh – they made a mistake and dealt with it when found. What’s the big deal?

You will find bugs in all applications and sites where large sections of code are required, including:

Microsoft Operating Systems
Wordpress (which this very site is built around)
Blogger

All having large dev teams but still do regular exploit updates to squash nasty bugs.

No matter how much you test the only real testing is through user experience and time. So, like I said, it’s no big deal. If anything they should be comended being quick of the mark with a fix, if it was Microsoft they would simply fix on the next update cycle.

I expect, Mike, that you are a really good coder and test to destruction, huh? Happy to give you a real job if that is the case, come see me sometime

Note: I am an ex Ecademy member. Will not be renewing and am proably somewhat bias. Feel free to flame, I know you wanna.

What did I do to get suspended? Again, nothing. THey just took it into their heads to suspend me. If this is customer service, well, no wonder so many people are asking for their accounts to be closed.

Erica
x

In fact, the claim was TENS of thousands. {{ We aren’t talking “membership” numbers here, Ecademy, so there’s no need for exaggerflation. }}

FACT: support records numbered 1 through about 22,500 were freely visible, so that claim – unlike yours – is accurate.

“…most of which are simple requests for help with the website”

FACT: the great majority of the records showed people asking for their accounts to be closed.

FACT: most of those requests that included a reason cited the immediacy and volume of contact requests (aka spam) as the reason for leaving.

Tut tut – you can’t even get your spin right!

Contrary to claims that hundreds of thousands of support records were visible, Ecademy has less than 19,000 support requests currently in the system, most of which are simple requests for help with the website.

However, from time to time, some members used the support system to record a complaint about another member. Ecademy operates a separate procedure for members wishing to provide member feedback and on this particular occasion a member had used the support system to lodge feedback about another member and it was this communication which has been circulated.

Ecademy treats the privacy of its members as a top priority and apologises for any inconvenience or distress caused by this fault. It is also unfortunate that it appears some individuals were aware of this issue several days earlier, but did not alert the business at that time. Ecademy would like to thank the members that did bring this issue to their attention and encourages all members to continue to report issues directly to the support team as soon as possible to ensure a quick resolve.

I’m not one for generalisations ordinarily but I’ve yet to be disabused of the impression that every ‘Blackstar’ (equivalent of masonic high priests, or so you’d think) has to pass a test confirming that they are suitably – yet pitifully – self-aggrandising.

Overall – propped up by the Blackstar lakeys – the organisation is a fantastic example of a cult of personality and, like other fanatics, many Ecademists are zealots in their defence of the order. Those at the top are seemingly blinkered as to why others view their self-congratulatory club as little more than a shop for having someone feign interest in your tinpot company as they inveigle you to pat their back in return.

It’s the Belgium of networking sites – irrelevant and run by people you’ve never heard of

As for Thomas’ comment in the “10 years old” article, mentioning the “vigorous debate”, Thomas wouldn’t know vigorous debate if it bit him on the nose. Try getting answers, and you will be met with a wall of obfuscation, or he will simply ban you from Ecademy.

Thomas is one of the worlds most connected people and actually knows people in more countries around the world that there are countries. Now that’s clever. Knowing Thomas is cheaper than an ad in Yellow Pages.

Penny, who always looks like Princess Di to me is, as her own publicity states “A networking legend” and she regularly runs clinics to help networkers decide which shades of pink mix well together when they are establishing their personal brand.

The Ecademy also runs a very special service not unlike Hotel California, once you join you are there forever (it’s called ‘not cleansing the database’), however i don’t think Hotel California spams you to the same degree.

However as i say this is all carping by people who wish they had a Web 3.0 site like the Ecademy when most if not all of it’s members not foolish enough to leave in the first five minutes are undoubtedly millionaires, or did Penny say Brazilianaires?

It does look like it was made the 80’s and do not say it all about networking crap, i had hundreds in my network and not one lead and helped over people lots, its a total rip off.

Chen.

I prefer to network with people who know how to read and write!