Today I got an invitation to join ringo.com, a photo and video sharing network. A friend had uploaded some photos. So I thought why not- I get to the second screen and it asks not only for my hotmail email address but the password. WTF!

Now I don’t know ringo from anybody-but nobody gets my hotmail password. Their idea is obviously to pick up all your friends email addresses from the contact list and invite them to join. Oh very neat- like we haven’t got enough spammers in the world already without me helping a site grow off this.

I don’t know ringo so why on earth should I trust them with this? This is an incredibly stupid policy. Their privacy policy is not exactly truthful either “The minimum information we require for a membership on Ringo is full name, date of birth, username, password and verified email address. “. Password? Yes, fine for the site, not for my hotmail account! Oh sure I could sign up and get a free email account but why should I? As you can see from the screen shot, its not optional either. no password, no signup. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Just avoid them.

Final thought. Does hotmail know about this? I can’t imagine they’d be too happy with members supplying their hotmail login credentials to another site.