Granting Access to others

I'm confused. I have a lot of contacts in Outlook. Some of my contacts also have Plaxo. By granting them "access" to keep me up-to-date am I allowing them to erase any of their contact information from their listing? For example, when I get someone's business card and enter it into my contacts I have name, title, company, phone, email, etc. If they are a PLAXO subscriber can they basically update my record by deleting all or some of this information?

You actually have full control over your entries. By default, Plaxo is set to take the other person's information, so if they change their phone number to something it will put that change into Outlook automatically. However, you can choose in Plaxo, Preferences, Advanced to not accept changes automatically. This way you can review each change and pick and choose which changed fields to accept.

Also, Plaxo always keeps around your version of the information. So no matter what the other member changes for their info, you can always revert back to what you had for the contact - you can see this information by opening a contact and clicking view sync details.

RFIDuser - just to add on to Bryan's comments...

As Bryan mentioned, you always control what goes into your own address book. By default, Plaxo updates entries automatically but you can configure your Plaxo preferences to allow you to review changes prior to saving them to your address book. You also have access the Change Log for each entry so you can view what information has changed and when and manually revert back to something that you wished to keep.

But your confusion may be the result of how updates to your address book occur.

Updates can occur in two different cases:

1) Update Request responses

As a Plaxo member, you can send out an Update Request message. If the recipient is a non-member, they will receive an email message that directs them to a secure web form, where they can manually update their information you currently maintain. They can respond with what ever updated information they wish to respond with, and these updates will be incorporated into your address book. Certainly, if someone wishes to respond by deleting all or some of their information, they certain can do so, and these "changes" will be incorporated back into your Plaxo address book. Normally, this is done automatically, but as I mentioned, you can review these changes prior to incorporating them into your address book.

2) Member-to-member card sharing

In this case, it is the other Plaxo member who has granted YOU access to their cards. Because you have been granted access to another member's cards, Plaxo will automatically update and synchronize the corresponding entry in your own address book to match what is on the granting Plaxo member's card (note: you have to have a corresponding entry in order for Plaxo to update an entry).

Plaxo will actually merge in information to your existing entry. For example, let's say you have a mobile number for me in your address book, but I have not included a mobile number on my Plaxo card. When you sync to my Plaxo card, the mobile phone number field will be left untouched.

But let's say I have a mobile phone number on my card. Plaxo will update the field in your address book to show what information I have on my Plaxo card.

Just as before, you still have control over how updates are incorporated into your address book (automatically or review) and you can always references the change log for each entry to view the changes that have been made.

I agree it can at first be confusing, but hopefully when you think about it, it makes sense.

Hope this helps,

Stacy Martin
Plaxo Privacy Officer
privacy @t plaxo.com