I would use this only if the Google authorization checklist actually says this only access email headers, and then I would like to be able to limit the past time period of email accessed, and not give ongoing access.
I understand granting "manage my email" access is a big step. Unfortunately, Gmail/Google Apps IMAP access is currently all-or-nothing. All we need to understand the network is read-only access to message headers--not including subject line--but we're forced to ask for everything.
The new Gmail API, https://developers.google.com/gmail/api/, adds a read-only (but not a read-only-headers) permission. We're looking forward to making the switch, but right now the performance difference between the Gmail API and plain IMAP is prohibitive. More on that here: http://blog.conspire.com/post/100016691078/why-we-arent-usin....
I think it might alleviate some concerns if you shared at least some notion of how you intend to monetize, e.g., selling anonymized marketing data, and, perhaps more importantly, how you will NOT monetize, e.g., never offering "recruiter" plans where folks get access to our stuff for a fee.
You don't have to say what you will do, but knowing what you will NOT do may allay concerns.
Thanks!
We will not spam your contacts, sell your or your contacts' email addresses or personal data, or otherwise sell data about you to third parties.
Down the road, we will offer premium plans with professional search tools. An example use case is if you want to reach CIOs in northern California at companies greater than 100 people, we will identify those people and tell you the best person in your network to ask for an intro. At the moment, we're focused on growing the size of the network and making it valuable for users.
One other subtle point I wanted to mention: We don't expose email addresses via the product. The only people you can email are those for which you already have an email address. The same is true for people trying to contact you. So you won't get a bunch of spam recruiter emails.
Seriously, this looks like an XKCD prank comic gone real.
Can anyone from conspire comment on why it needs more than read-only access to your mail? From reading the privacy policy I gather that the reason might be because they are trying to actually protect people's privacy by not sharing the email address of the person they are emailing on your behalf. I'm not sure though, and if it is actually sending an email from an account that you own I don't see how they can hide that from you. They could delete the sent message to do a basic cover up but (I think) anyone who really wanted to know could probably find out the last email that was sent from their account. Then again if the messages are sent using their service as a middleman (more likely imho) then I'm still stumped as to why they need more than 'read only' access to my email.
OTOH, nice project and blissfully simple!
