June 2007

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I don't know on what planet it's supposed to be all right for networking sites to ask for a person's e-mail password so they can go through and bug contacts on his or her behalf. I will not play along.

For one thing, aside from the obvious fact that we've been warned over and over again not to hand over passwords to anyone (my best friend doesn't know mine), there are people in my contacts that I'm not close to and don't particularly want to invite into another facet of my life.

Changing the subject slightly, one of the sites (unnamed, because I don't want to be a search result), directed at business, apparently has a flaw in its version of private messages. There is no way to delete one. If you've ever been part of a message board that offers a private message feature, you've probably gotten at least one message that didn't need a reply and didn't need keeping. I know I have.

Well, I got one through this system earlier this month. The man sending it wanted to know if I were the same Rebecca he knew from another venue. He said if I were not, I shouldn't bother to reply. I'm not the Rebecca, but I couldn't get the message to go away.

Every time I signed into the service I got an alert that there was a message that needed my attention. It was the same message, of course. I searched all over the place for something that resembled delete. I found nothing. I found several ways of replying to the message, but not one to get rid of it.

I read through the site's FAQs. but found no answer. I then wrote to customer service. I had to wait three days for a reply, but when it came, I thought my (admittedly not huge) problem was solved...the solution from them was to use the archive function. Sounded like a plan to me, so I went to my page, clicked into the message again, and no archive function.

Then CS told me to look for "archive" through my sent message folder. There wasn't one, never mind the fact that I hadn't sent the damned thing to begin with. There wasn't one in the received messages folder, either. And no way to cancel the alert.

I finally decided that replying to the sender was my only recourse. I told him why I was writing, then suggested that if he had the same problem with my message he should feel free to reply using the "not interested" reply button (which is really to do with job offers). So far, nothing from him, so I guess you can delete replies. Or he has a stronger tolerance for unnecessary alerts than I do.

Replying did cancel the alert. And I learned a lesson: never use that system if I don't want a reply. And its partner lesson: reply anyway.