Shoutbox

I'm against this change.

Here in Brazil, that's where I live, Messenger is used in a much more free way - most people are not very picky of who they add or not. So almost everyone uses nickname - or just the first name - when on the internet. WLM is largely used as a way to know strangers a bit better - someone you met one a forum, social network (as Orkut, that is the most used here - Facebook is not that popular yet), chat rooms and so on. So here it's a big security issue: people that are upgrading are opening personal info sometimes to completely strangers. Even in Orkut people usually don't put their full name on it. Not even in Facebook, as a matter of fact.

Some may say that how people use WLM here should change, but I think that's beside the point - you see I'm extremely criterious of who I add, I have almost only people that I know in my real life and yet I use a nickname. Because as I said: ALMOST. There are some 'strangers'. I think that's why most messengers uses nickname system: it's safer. This this way: there are lots of chat groups WLM-based out there. It's very common here to have this tipe of service offered from sites to promote their visitors and members integration. Here Messenger is rarely used as just a  tool to keep in contact with family or for work-related: it's almost a social network on itself.

Worse than that, if any person of my contact list upgrade, they'll see my real name without me knowing that. That's plainly invasive. As now that I upgraded I see from people I have on my contact list. And with a full name if I wanted I could do some really bad things without much effort. It's not that hard to find your ID card number, telephone number or other highly personal information with a full name - and this things we donm't shed that easily here! With name and birthday date I could retrieve almost any information that I want. You why I say that here this IS a security issue really really bad?

I don't know if there is a way of changing that but yes I believe that complaining may be the only chance. I don't care about Facebook: I have it and it's not a WLM feature that I see as essential. Lots of people will simply ignore it - as I said Orkut is popular, not Facebook. They should not compromise security based on that. Things are not just worse because most people here still uses the old WLM - because they heard bad things about the new one, because there is no Msg Plus! for it or because they like Win XP too much to upgrade to Win7.

So that's my humble opinion - as just a normal user. I'm sorry if I made grammar mistakes (as I said, I'm Brazillian, I speak Portuguese, not English XD).