Ignore Quechup Invites, Please!
I have been had. I am furious, but that’s nothing next to what I am fully expecting to receive from friends, family, and professional colleagues. ARRRGHHHHH!!!!!!!!!
Please disregard any invitation from Quechup – from me or anyone else.
I was invited to this networking site by a friend. You can see on the right-hand menu that I am involved in lots of online social sites.
I joined up, but they somehow hijacked my emails’ address book. I was shocked to receive a couple of out-of-office auto-replies.
I did _not_ request for invitations to be sent, or for my email addressbook to be accessed!
I have deleted my own membership, and my friend has also deleted her account.
If you receive an invitation to join, I advise you to delete the email. I am researching to find out how I might pursue a formal complaint.
I am deeply sorry for the breach and any inconvenience. My sincere apologies.
Thanks for the heads-up.
No problem, Heidi, and thanks for letting us know it was just an annoying accident.
Good week!
Update:
Rec’d a response to my Quechup email:
“Clearly stated on all pages when checking your address book is the following message,
Checking your contact lists finds matches on Quechup for you and sends an invite to non Quechup members to join. By inviting contacts you confirm you have consent from them to send an invitation. Quechup will not spam or sell addresses from your contacts.
Regards
Bettina Samain
Member Support”
To which I have replied:
“First of all, it couldn’t have been that clearly stated since I did not see it. I thought that I was merely checking to see if any of my friends were already on the network. There should have been a second step that told me which ones were, and then asked me if I would like to invite people from my network. At that point, I would select WHICH ones to receive an invite.
That is the standard method at credible social networks, and all the major ones follow this procedure.
Here is the reason, in case you haven’t yet decoded the reason that so many people immediately drop their accounts: Sending an invite to _everybody_ in almost anyone’s addressbook is a
disaster. You are only creating problems for your members.
It is a breach of privacy, plain and simple.
These kinds of things just don’t work – the web makes such viral and unethical practices too transparent, and people do communicate your methods to others. Then – aha!- no-one wants to be associated with you.
I would like to talk with someone involved in your imaging, branding, and reputation. Obviously, member support is not the right place to discuss such issues as long-term planning.
Again, I would like to discuss this with an executive at your company. Please send appropriate contact information so that I might lodge a formal complaint and see if I can help you out with your online reputation and any future prospect for your success online.”
Someone could easily make an argument for loss of personal credibility and potential loss to future income. This is not only a nasty practice, but also could be one that brings them a lawsuit.
I decided to do a search on quechup.com and have been amazed at the amount of blogs from various people moaning about Quechup sending invites to all their contacts in address books. I dont know about most people but i read things before i do anything and it clearly states when you check your address book that they are sending invites out to friends that arent on Quechup, and you give them permission to do it. So for all you moaners read next time.
No, it didn’t say.
Dear, sweet “Hotmail Hayley” (Ripe Network, Amsterdam) – this is a very transparent attempt damage control.
Your exact comment here appears under the name “Brough” on another blog.
There is also a Hayleybop blog that seems to have been created to support the Hayley Quechup PR project.
Look – the practice is unethical – and it’s just silly and sneaky and stupid to continue doing it. What is the purpose? Stealing emails just to spam? Are they selling the lists too?
People would use the service more if they allowed them to select who they wanted to invite. No-one wants to invite everyone in their address book. Their mother? Their boss? C’mon, get a clue.
Just take the advice and change the practice. Don’t bother with this kind of thing.
Heidi,
I had to laugh when I read this comment from “Hayley” — it’s the fourth time I’ve seen her say the exact same thing, the second time in only the last 20 minutes or so.
As for her posting under the name “Brough” once, I actually read that post this past Monday afternoon (this whole issue having blown up again last weekend, which was the first time I’d heard about it). (It really blew up: One unfortunate soul had his Gmail account suspended for supposedly spamming.) Brough is actually the name of the blog owner. He explains further in the comment thread that the layout of the comments is a little wacky: The author and date under the dividing line actually belong to the comment above the line, not below. So, that “Posted by:” line quoted above is attached to the previous comment, not the one quoted. “Hayley”’s comment was posted under the name “Hayley,” which seems to be appropriate to the cluelessness of the company, in general — they seem to be under the impression that nobody’ll catch on!
Cheers,
Anice
Yeah, Brough wrote to me and explained. I misread the layout.
I still haven’t lived this thing down.
Lesson: Google it for reputation before you join!