Shoutbox

Well, About the dodgy thing... I find that a little exaggerated.

If I allow a person on my contact list, I think I won't have a problem that he or she can view my birthday.
I don't think that this information can be misused, (a person who has -for his Hotmail address- the secret question: What's your birthday, is just stupid...or does not have any friends who could come up with the idea, hm, what a cheap secret question, let's hack'em). Correct me if I am wrong here.

So an allow-list just for blocking one or two contacts, that seems to be a little absurd. And if you don't want it to be shared, well, you can leave it blank, or choose not to show it to the people in the contact list.

Ofcourse there is the alternative for scheduling a yearly task. But that takes alot of time, and if you have to ask each friend for his birthday, that also takes alot of time, while if you do it yourself during installation, it is veeeeery timesaving.

The second idea: Well, that's why I think there should be a minimum of users that should click the 'Messenger not working' before it sends everyone that message. How many times does messenger state that 'All systems are up and running' while in the meantime, everyone has difficulties signing on.

I also believe you can look at it statistically: Like in a poll, there are always some stupids trying to be funny and checking the wrong answer, just to ruin statistics. But if there are alot of users, there will always be a bigger group of people who won't misuse the poll, or this idea of Downtime-button. Ofcourse in the beginning, a lot of people will misuse the function, but after a while, more and more people will use it properly, I think... (or am I just being too idealistic?)

This is only my way of looking at it ofcourse.

Kindly yours,

Christoph