Just Dial: Now protects contest winners emails
By Sumir Singh

Just Dial describes itself as ‘India’s No. 1 local search engine’ and it does a pretty good job at connecting peoples with business and services. Sequoia Capital backed Just Dial earned revenue of $32 million this financial year, and is all set to conquer America. Just Dial is promising to hire Americans in its US BPO.

Just Dial has tightened up its security processes so that it now hides the full email addresses of its Indian contest winners.

Just Dial had launched an online contest where Indians log on to the Just Dial website and register their details as well as refer friends. If the friends use Just Dial, you were in the running to win prizes which included a TV, laptop and iPods.  This cashed up contest is quite popular among Indians.

Just Dial promised all contestants in their ‘Terms and Conditions’: “Just Dial shall keep confidential all information you disclose during the registration and referral process; the terms of Just Dial’s privacy policy shall apply to all such information.”

But as reported by Techgoss on Jan 4, 2010, Just Dial was publicly releasing the emails of contest winners (See image above).

After the Techgoss article, Just Dial has tightened up its processes and now masks some key details of the email address. 

(Techgoss had published the following article on Jan 4, 2010)

Just Dial winner revealed
By Sumir Singh

Just Dial describes itself as ‘India’s No. 1 local search engine’.  And it does a pretty good job at connecting peoples with business and services.

Just Dial had launched an online contest where Indians log on to the Just Dial website and register their details as well as refer friends. If the friends use Just Dial, you were in the running to win prizes which included a TV, laptop and iPods.

Just Dial promised all contestants in their ‘Terms and Conditions’: “Just Dial shall keep confidential all information You disclose during the registration and referral process; the terms of Just Dial’s privacy policy shall apply to all such information.”

One of the contestants contacted Techgoss to say how Just Dial has published the personal email addresses of the top two winners who happen to be women.  While Janet Gonsalves has won a Samsung LCD TV and Anjali has won a Sony Notebook,  they may not be took happy to see their personal emails, photos and last 5 digits of their phone published for the world to see.

Why would anyone ‘promise confidentiality’ and then publish the personal email addresses of young women? If some perverts were not bad enough, there are spammers and hackers looking for email addresses on the internet.

Would you like your personal email address published in a site for tens of thousands of people to see?