We all know this is happening, and will continue to happen more and more, but this experience was surprising to me so I thought I'd share it.

A few weeks ago I emailed a business contact.
Later I called her, and didn't bother putting her name in my phone.

Today I was looking through my contacts, and was surprised to see her name in there (since I hadn't entered it) - when I opened her entry in my contact list, on my phone, her photo is there.

All because (a) I emailed her, once (and not from my phone) and (b) she uploaded a photo of herself, tied to her email address.


You know, its cool and all - nice that things like this can happen automatically, behind the scenes, but I don't want my business contacts to necessarily have a photo of me. Worse, I don't want every person I happen to email, ever, for any reason, to have a photo of me. Or worse still - anyone who ever gets their grubby little paws on my email address.

I know this is an easy problem to prevent, and prevent it I did due to (what others have termed) extreme paranoia. When I first encountered 'photos tied to email' so many years ago, my friends seemed to think that only your friends, whom you chat with via IM, would ever see that photo. I figure anything I upload, ever, is released to the whole world, forever, so I opted for an artists rendering of a black hole rather than a picture of me.

Still, it rather bugs me that anyone using an advanced phone who has any email contact with me might have that 'black hole' photo placed in their phone's contact list. Yes, I can take down the photo - but consider that this feature has probably been available to others for years, and has escaped my attention till now.

My "why do you use a 'space' photo???!!" friends thought I was being insanely paranoid, so many years ago... and today I have this persons photo in my phone, without their permission.

And to think of all that personal data up on facebook...

I wonder if one day a person will be able to simply take out their cell and surreptitiously shoot a photo of a random stranger, and (via image-matching search, and social networks) pull up that persons name, age, vocation, address, pictures of their family members...

It already an available technology...

It still blows me away sometimes that my mother
has a microwave we gave her for Christmas 15 years
ago, but still don't know how to use it...

Wow.....I have never heard of this. Gonna have to look into it.

Facebook is the debil

where i've noticed it happen is with my facebook contacts. if someone has their phone number posted on facebook, then it automatically puts their facebook pic as my caller ID for them.

it even overwrites the pic that i've chosen. kind of annoying, actually...and places their email into my phone, as well.