[IxDA Discuss] ADMIN: Invites from Social Networks

[David Malouf]

A lot of people sent me messages offline confirming the following.

1. Quechup does not ask for permission to send email to people from
the contacts you import. Bryan (our guilty party) had no idea that any
messages were going to be sent.

2. At least one other service out there called Shelfari does something similar

Our less from all of this:
1. Please be aware that Gmail and some other services will add any
address you reply-to or write directly to to your contact list. My
contact list is like at 2500 and I don't know all of them.  Well many
of them are you folks. ;-)

2. Doing blanket imports of your contact list is a dangerous act and
you should check with the service provider about explicitly they are
going to do with those addresses. You may have no rights to them at
all after upload and thus you are supplying a mean, bad, old spammer.


I would like to add that your contact list is YOUR responsibility. I
think accountability for the data you own is a reasonable request.
Saying that Quechup or similar services are to blame is to give up
that accountability. We live in an age where bad people take advantage
of good people in the interest of making money. We are all
technologists and are informed and aware of the technological universe
we live in. Thus, as I said in my original message, the persons who
have their email addresses uploaded to a service that sends out
invites are in the end responsible for the sending as much as the
service is.

Please be wary of such services and be aware of the contents of your
contact list.

-- dave