You’ve seen them all, haven’t ya, starting with Windows crashing at Comdex-98 ! Well, while I couldn’t see that first-hand, thanks to an over-hyped Indian startup, I’ve experienced something else. Most of you must have come across the recent news articles on a company called Nivio seemingly offering an online desktop! And as with most other web 2.0 companies whose products are forever in beta and you need to be privileged to be given an invite, Nivio too had a sign-up list for which I promptly signed up. Only mistake I made was trusting the company with my regular email id since I felt a company which claims to have all your files securely accessible 24×7 would be bothered a trifle bit about that vague concept called privacy! Alas, it wasn’t so. For over 5 hours yesterday, some nice souls realized that they could send out mails to every single user that had signed up for Nivio. And the result, tons of email- some having fun, some exasperated, some frustrated and some smart spammers too ! All the while, the folks at Nivio seemed to have no clue. Posts on their forum yielded no response save a terse we-are-working-on-it reply ! Tried calling up the phone no. listed on their site and lo, they claim not to be associated with any company called Nivio ! And in a case of pathetic mis-handling, those folks went ahead and started to delete any and every post that cries for  a solution.

Current status is that the mails have stopped and their CEO has mailed an apology, however, no hint of how to unsubscribe anywhere (yea, remember, I am still on their wait list-not even a beta user!!!). Mistakes happen, but then web-based companies, in particular, need to realize how to handle frayed emotions, particularly in matters of privacy! Deleting posts, staying silent, and not providing ubsubscription links are definitely not the recommended actions ;)