The accusation of Plaxo by Comcast has got me thinking about whether or not I want to keep using the service.
Often when a service gets bought by a large corporate entity you worry about your data privacy. Now I'm not saying
your data is at risk right now, but that lingering doubt is there.
I have other reasons in thinking about leaving Plaxo. Most of which is their expansion beyond the address book service I use to love to use. Back when I first heard of Plaxo it was just a universal address book. If your contacts were also using Plaxo, they could edit their information, and your address book would stay up to date. Then Plaxo expanded beyond a universal address book into social networking and life streaming (Pulse). The address book is still there, but its now buried under a sub-tab.
I'm not dropping Plaxo right away, but I am taking steps in that direction. First thing I did was remove the Plaxo Thunderbird and Outlook Add-Ons. This will keep any new e-mail address out of Plaxo (unless I add them).
The next thing I want to do is make a backup of my Plaxo contacts. Without signing up for Plaxo's premium backup service, the only option is to export my contacts. Plaxo doesn't make it obvious on how to do this. So after some digging around Plaxo's help files, I found the instructions.
How do I export my contacts
Steps from Plaxo Help. I added the screen shots
- In Pulse, Click on the "People" tab
- Select the "Address Book" tab
- Click on “Add sync points” (bottom of the screen)
- At the very top of the lightbox in the text there is a link for exporting. Click there.
It's the 2nd "click here" in the paragraph.
- Decide what format you’d like
- Click Export
(Note to self: must remember to use TrueCrypt.)
Now if I decide to drop Plaxo for good, I'm ready.
