Spam Alert! Just say no to Quechup
September 3, 2007
(Crossposted from TechBlog)
If you get an invitation from a friend inviting you to join a social networking site call Quechup, delete it. Joining up and making the wrong decisions in the process could result in the site spamming everyone in your address book.
Yes, Quechup is a genuine social network. But the way it acquires new members is questionable at best.
When you accept an invitation and sign up, it asks you if you’d like to find other people who may be on it by scanning your e-mail address book for people who are in the service. If you use a Web-based e-mail account — Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo, for example — it asks for your login information.
This is common to many social networks — Twitter will do this, for example. But Quechup goes one step further. It automatically sends an e-mail invitation to everyone in your address book, which looks as though it came from you. It does this without warning — essentially, spamming in your name.
I received an invitation that appeared to come from a local blogger. I joined, but did not allow the address-book scan. After I mentioned what I’d done on Twitter, someone warned me about the site and I did some quick research.
This blogger fell for it and wound up spamming all his contacts. He then sent them all an apology, and the resulting e-mail blast caused Google to suspend his Gmail account!
Be smart, and stay away from this site. It’s got serious ethical problems with the way it recruits new users.
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September 3rd, 2007 at 11:54 am
[...] Quechup has now sent multiple e-mails to all of my contacts inviting them IN MY NAME to join the service.This is quite embarrassing. My contact list contains the addresses of all my friends as well as listeners to my radio show and readers of my column who I have corresponded with in the past. As of this writing I have been thanked by some, questioned by others and had some very unpleasant things wished upon me and members of my family. If you received an invite to Quechup from me, please ignore it and accept my apologies. If you did sign up I encourage you to delete your account and not let it scan your contact list for any reason. Dwight Silverman has written a good article about the Quechup scam on his Techblog called “Spam Alert! Just say no to Quechup“ [...]
September 4th, 2007 at 8:07 pm
Hello, Jay! I received your Invite and was curious about “why an invite from a British social networking for you?!” Then before I decide to create that account , I thought, Let me check out your website for any “info” on you “really” inviting or a hoax. GLAD I CHECKED FIRST. You should be recommended for your fast, prompt notification! just wished you still did not have the AOL screen name in the address book of yours? Is it scraped from the website? if so How? since my email address on the new site is different from when I joined and had previous questions?
Again, thanks for the post AND Make sure to “blast” back a warning on the air, TV or newspaper, however, for the misinformed public.
Keep up the good works and Deeds. (:
September 4th, 2007 at 11:30 pm
In an effort to get caught up with tech shows and general online geeky stuff, I too fell for this. Accck! I should have known better. Gmail is pretty good about stopping phony emails from getting into my in box, maybe too good.
Good thing I popped by here and then quickly deleted my Quechup account. I have nothing to say bad about Jay, but I sure feel hornswaggled too. I passed on letting them scan my address books as I don’t let anyone do that. I just hope I didn’t “send invites” to my friends too.
Thanks to Dwight and Jay.