Newbie question: search by email?

auspice

Hi there,

I'm new to the SmugMug API, so forgive me if this is an obvious question. Is there any way to determine if a given email address has an account on SmugMug? Our web service (http://readr.com) does its best to automatically detect users' accounts, and it would be super helpful if we could find users' SmugMug accounts.

Any ideas?

Thanks for your time,
dave

devbobo

G'day Dave,

It's not an api method that we currently have, but it's potentially something we can add.

Cheers,

David

auspice

Hi David,

Thanks for getting back to me so quickly. I'll explicitly put in my vote for it, and I know we wouldn't be the only service to find it useful (see http://friendfeed.com, http://spokeo.com, etc).

Thanks again,
dave

mhilbush

Ok, I'll play devil's advocate on this.... From a security and/or privacy perspective, why would you want to make it easy for someone to mine the email addresses that have Smugmug accounts? Would you want your online banking site to offer this service??? I see no real value for your Smugmug account holders. If you add this API, please give me a way to exclude my email address from being discovered by the API.

Mark

devbobo

Hey Mark,

That's why I said potentially

It could definitely be a potential privacy issue.

Cheers,

David

mhilbush

Ah, I overlooked the _potentially_ part of your response.

Mark

madeingermany

Hey Dave,
you could check if NICKNAME.smugmug.com exists, if you have this data.
Alternatively, ask the user for their SmugMug password and do a regular login

I'm not in favor of giving Spammers any APIs to validate email addresses....

Marco

denisegoldberg

I'd prefer that people not be able to use my email address to find my smug site. If something like this is implemented, I would definitely like to see an opt-out setting. Well actually, I think it should be an opt-in setting for existing accounts - as in, don't allow it without permission.

--- Denise