I know the subject is kind of stating the obvious, but I’ve reached the snapping point.
A few days ago, I realized my entire inbox contained all the mail I had ever received. It wasn’t that surprising (and was what I was expecting), I just didn’t think MySpace would work that way, and instead would clear it out after xx days, like they do with bulletins, etc.. anyhow, since there’s no “delete all” (???) I had to manually delete hundreds of e-mails.
After clearing out about half of my mail, it would come back with “Page 1” and there would be no mail on the screen, just the “next page” link. Huh? Clicking “next page” took me to another page of e-mail, this time with actual mail on it to delete. I repeat this, until I get to about 6 pages or so left, but each page is completely blank. This leads me to conclude that:
1) MySpace doesn’t actually delete the e-mail permanently, and is instead setting a flag or something (DeletedFlag?) in the database that indicates the mail is deleted.
2) MySpace’s inbox “pager” which generates page numbers and forward/back links is most likely not factoring in the DeletedFlag.
So that’s one issue to report to the support department.. as well as another issue I’ve been having involving changing my e-mail address— I simply can’t do it. MySpace claims it sends my new e-mail address a confirmation number, but I don’t get it. MySpace’s mail servers never even connect to my mail server.
So anyhow, I send the e-mail to support, expecting to never hear back, but surprisingly, I got an e-mail yesterday with just “We’re working on it. Thanks, MySpace Support”. Wow, thanks for the detailed and professional response. And what are you working on exactly? My InBox problem or the e-mail thing? *shrug* It looks like they meant the InBox problem, because the page numbers are gone today from my InBox, and it truly looks empty.
Moving on, this is what set me off tonight:
This problem has been happening since MySpace started, and Tom’s just now making it an announcement? Nevermind how unprofessional it is. (all lowercase??)
If you read his blog entry, he talks about how people are making fake MySpace login pages (sometimes even using a MySpace profile itself to fake a login screen.. hahahaha!)
Look at the right hand side.. “check her for latest info” ? Did you mean check HERE, Tom? Or perhaps I am indeed supposed to check “her” for latest info?
I notice that my scrollbar on this blog entry is tiny.. the page must have tons of comments on it. Scroll down.. nope, only showing 48 per page. Turns out it’s the ENTIRE list of “Who Gives Kudos”, on each comment page. Like anyone cares. Why must it show the entire list? Why not show like the first 10, and then have a “show the rest” link, like the rest of the web does?
I posted a comment/reply to his blog, but it’s doubtful that he’ll respond. Here goes:
Tom,
Why not implement something like Yahoo does, that shows a custom piece of text or image on the login form (set by the user) in order to prove it's from Yahoo.com's login service.
Also, why are you letting profiles get created/modified in order to look like a log-in page? Some simple HTML filtering would take care of that. Or perhaps you could add a "report this profile" link to the page somewhere-- I've run across numerous profiles that violate the terms of use, either with pornography or other things, yet I have no way of easily reporting them.
And while I'm rambling, why do you allow sites to place their tags/crap all over the auto-generated profile code? Why not clean that up or disallow it completely? That's where most extra advertisements, tracking cookies and other "iffy" things come from..
And finally, I hope you guys fixed the cross-site scripting problems? Otherwise, that would explain why bulletins automatically get posted to people's accounts just by visiting another "bad" site while being still logged into MySpace.
Are you looking for an ASP.Net developer in Southern California who can help? Send me some mail.
I recently had to fix a friend’s computer because they let one of their daughters view MySpace on their computer, which was running Windows XP and for some reason wasn’t running automatic updates. An advertisement, either from MySpace’s ad pool or one of the profiles she viewed exploited a flaw in Internet Explorer, and downloaded/executed a program that proceeded to download about 20 to 30 pieces of spyware, toolbars, etc. — joy! The fact that someone can put code like that on their profile is reason enough to block MySpace from your network, and not let your children near it.
The Yahoo idea I mention is actually pretty darn cool. They call it a “sign-in seal”, and it’s a user-chosen piece of text or image that will appear in the upper right corner of the login box whenever it’s an “official” Yahoo.com login accessed via your computer. The downside is that this is not “automatic” and requires the user to set it up before they get the benefit of it.. but hey, if you’re worried about your personal information, you’d want to be on top of something like this, right?
I think it makes sense, and I hope other sites start to adopt something similiar. Now, if only we could educate people on what a strong password looks like..
Update: I did a quick search on Google's blog searching engine, and found these other bloggers who seem to agree with me:
http://darkmotion.com/blog/2006/10/24/why-myspace-sucks-ass/
http://www.mpdailyfix.com/2006/10/myspace_sucks.html
http://onlinecomics.blogspot.com/2006/10/myspace-sucks.html
http://josepho.wordpress.com/2006/09/09/myspace-sucks-the-saga-continues/
http://www.leliathomas.com/2006/10/16/testing-my-myspace-theory-post-3/