Having calmed down a little, I did email RapLeaf several times, demanding that they remove everyone in my address book from their server. You will not be surprised to learn that they declined to do so, saying that they could only remove information about a person if that person requested it themselves. After all, having stolen the data from me, why should they be expected to do anything about it?

The flip side is that I reckon they are doomed. It’s not just the negative publicity from the last few days (just type in “Rapleaf” into Icerocket, Technorati or Google Blogsearch), it’s that the whole concept is flawed. Way back in April, Ian McAllister presciently predicted that RapLeaf would run into two problems: the fact that it’s not itself involved with transactions where users will rate each other based on their reputation, and the fact that it will not have a lot of users on its books to start with.

The theft of data from me and others obviously helps them with the second problem, but the first is still pretty insuperable. Valleywag’s article, The rap on Rapleaf, the “trust meter” you can’t trust has an article about RapLeaf’s inevitable descent into being a sleazy people-search site and a resource for internet marketers.

Anyway, the concept is even more flawed than that; it will never work. My reputation, and yours, are not going to be reducible to a number (or a set of numbers) in general, and RapLeaf’s ambition of doing precisely that for everyone on the Internet is impossible to achieve (and they can only approach it by resorting to dubious practices). The eBay seller reputation system works because at the time you are deciding whether or not to make a business transaction with someone you’ve never met, you really want to know the probability that they will come through on their side of the deal. But you don’t care about whether or not they are faithful to their partner, or have a tendency to tell obscene jokes in front of children, or have outrageous political views; and those things anyway are not reducible to numbers, and will be of varying importance to different people in terms of forming an idea of your reputation. Edited to add: Same point is made by Matt Blumberg.

In certain places and with certain people my reputation is, to put it mildly, very negative, because of my political views and activities. The RapLeaf model would enable those who disapprove of my politics to destroy my reputation for everything else simply by logging in and giving me a low rating for everything. It has no safeguards against that kind of victimisation.

Anyway, my hope and expectation is that the investors will spot this pretty soon and pull the plug.