User: diachrony Date: 2007-11-09 10:01 Subject: why not to use shelfari, ever. Security: Public Tags: site scams

Shelfari spam: "basically social networking rapists"

Article links to 51 (yes, 51) blog and journal posts from furious victims of the Shelfari spam scam.

If you haven't heard of Shelfari, be warned that you may get spam invitations in your inbox if any of your friends have registered with the service.

Per Jesse Wegman of the New York Observer: Shelfari spammed "every single person with whom I have exchanged an e-mail in the past three years, in addition to every single person who has ever been on the same cc list as I have, regardless of whether we have ever met, in addition to every single listserv I have ever joined and every single Web site from which I have ever ordered anything."

How they do it:

The method is simple. When you sign up for Shelfari you are dumped into a screen that offers to send out check-out-my-books invitations to friends. The user interface is confusing and deceptive, and what seems like an attempt to continue into the site really sends out hundreds or thousands of letters to everyone you've ever known by email. Reminder-letters follow. Skipping this step requires clicking out-of-the-way, gray non-underlined text.

Like Quechup. Remember Quechup?

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User: diachrony Date: 2007-09-09 20:46 Subject: social networking site spam scam: beware Quechup Security: Public Tags: site scams

If you get an email invite purporting to be from a friend and it turns out to be for a social networking service called "Quechup," don't even bother. Just delete it. They are indeed a social networking site, but their registry process, if you're not careful, allows them (without even warning you) to spam your entire address book.
TechBlog warns us in Spam Alert: Just Say No to Quechup and Matt Staggs offers a comprehensive link roundup on the scam.

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