Did IBM actually listen to me?

Or was it a coincidence? I'm not sure because I never did hear back from anyone within IBM in response to my open letter.

The letter I speak of was a rant where I openly asked IBM why they thought it was appropriate to list member email addresses on their newly created communities site by default and not allow for an opt-out. What they really should have done was to set all details as private by default and allow people to opt-in with regards to their details being made public. The fact there was not even an opt-out in relation to email addresses being displayed was unacceptable in my opinion.

I've been away for the past week snowboarding in the French Alps (I just had to throw that bit of detail in - curse me if you must) so I've been a little bit out of it. In trying to "plug" myself back into society, I decided to have a look at the IBM communities site for a laugh. I even contemplated posting my rant to the forum due to their lack of any response. But to my surprise, I noticed something different: email addresses are no longer displayed!

I don't seem to see any changes in being able to set privacy controls, so the interface is exactly the same. But some educated individual's either decided that public emails were a bad idea or they read my rant and did something about it. Makes you all warm and fuzzy doesn't it.

In other news, I'm still getting a shed-load of spam to the email address that IBM made public. Thanks IBM.