Dear GMail,
Dear GMail,
I would like you to know that it really really sucks how you add everybody to my address book who I only sent one mail to, ever. That clogs the address book and depending on what kind of message it was, after just about 30 seconds I neither care nor remember what I wrote them an email about once in my lifetime.
Imagine me writing an email to some company’s customer service. I get an answer from a representative asking me to provide some more information. I reply and attach the needed infos. You helpfully add this person to my address book so I can remember every customer service representative that I ever had to deal with, just in case I ever need to email them personally again. Thank you so much!
Let alone all these random people on craigslist who use a gmail address who you add to my instant messenger automatically, so they can start chatting with me or at the very least see me being online for the next 25 years.
A one-click option to add somebody to your address book is a great idea. Automatically adding everybody to my address bucket (that mess is not a book anymore) however is a bad idea.
Just sayin’…
Amen
“who you add to my instant messenger automatically”
This part of the problem you can solve – there’s a setting so online status and chat is only available to people you explicitly add, rather than anyone that you’re emailing…
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en-uk&answer=29795
Michael: Thanks for pointing that out! (However arguably auto-adding to the chat is not a good default option either but at least I could switch it off).
I whole heartedly agree. There are over 2,500 “contacts” in my address book and the vast majority I can’t remember who they are. It’s so useless I haven’t even looked at it in over a year.
It even gets worse if you decide to sync your iPhone/Apple address book with Google. Some contacts’ detail information disappeared (as did all my IM contacts) and iSync will add all those useless collected addresses to your Mac’s address book!
Actually, automatically adding names to the address book is one of the features that I like most about GMail.
amen! although as michael pointed out it could be turned off… it’s still annoying….
should have had the ’switch button’ somewhere more visible.. not just sitting in the setting/Chat.. (also, why ‘Chat’ tag? see? it BY DEFAULT forces you to ‘chat’ with someone you sent email to????)
Regarding
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en-uk&answer=29795
The “Only allow people that I’ve explicitly approved to chat with me and see when I’m online” feature does not work for me. Anyone I respond to by email is automatically placed in my Chat list. It is a hassle removing them. I’ve written Gmail, but of course they don’t respond.