All of the sudden I'm getting a lot of spam from a social networking site called Quechup. The e-mails come from other bloggers, which at least gives it an air of authenticity, but a little investigation reveals that it's a a site the you should steer clear of at all costs.
During registration Quechup (as do lots of other sites) allows you to check your Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, AOL, Outlook or Outlook Express address books to see who you that's already on the service. The scam is that Quechup doesn't just send an invitation to the matches the user selects to send invitations to, but rather they spam the entire mailbox without the users permission.
The Houston Chronicle TechBlog pointed to some poor blogger who not only inadvertently spammed all his contacts, but then got his Gmail account temporarily suspended when he tried to send an explanation and apology e-mail to his whole contact list. That blogger (Matt Staggs) posted a roundup of negative mentions and mea culpas from around the blogoshphere this weekend.
If you see anything from Quechup in your mailbox do your friends and colleagues a favor; mark it as spam and then delete it for good...
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Comments (5)
I just got one of th... (Below threshold)1. Posted by Russ | September 3, 2007 10:00 PM | Score: 1 (1 votes cast)
I just got one of these invites. I suspected it was s[p|c]am... thanks for the confirmation.
1. Posted by Russ | September 3, 2007 10:00 PM |
Score: 1 (1 votes cast)
Posted on September 3, 2007 22:00
2. Posted by Brian The (in)Adequate | September 4, 2007 7:53 AM | Score: 1 (1 votes cast)
Wish I were as smart as Russ.
There is nothing funner than realizing that you have spammed (albeit inadvertantly) all of your friends.......
Unless it is spamming the emails of 6 different teams worth of soccer moms from your kids teams.
@#$#^&% Quechup
2. Posted by Brian The (in)Adequate | September 4, 2007 7:53 AM |
Score: 1 (1 votes cast)
Posted on September 4, 2007 07:53
3. Posted by Veeshir | September 4, 2007 2:00 PM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Wait, you guys aren't into a phenomenon that's SWEEPING THE GLOBE?!?!?!?!?!
Don't you wanna be cool?
3. Posted by Veeshir | September 4, 2007 2:00 PM |
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Posted on September 4, 2007 14:00
4. Posted by Jay | September 5, 2007 9:35 AM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
After the one I got on the Wizbang mailing list, I got one at two addresses plus the CotC submission mailbox from a prominent business blogger, and another in the CotC mailbox from a different well known business blogger. Both of them are pretty bright and were fooled, so no surprise a lot of other folks were too.
I saw this same thing in the past, call it a few years ago but I forget when exactly, and while I forgot that when I saw the first invite, something tugged at my suspicion meter. Or maybe it was only that the first invite I saw went to a mailing list, which human intervention would not likely have done, and that the service was nothing I'd ever heard of before.
4. Posted by Jay | September 5, 2007 9:35 AM |
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Posted on September 5, 2007 09:35
5. Posted by spurwing plover | September 5, 2007 4:27 PM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
And anyone remember ABCs WIDE WOLD OF SPORTS and THE THRILL OF VICTORY AND THE AGONY OF DEFEAT and the guy faling off the ski jump that must have realy hurt and the AGONY OF DEFEET is what happens when the GIs get through witha long long march
5. Posted by spurwing plover | September 5, 2007 4:27 PM |
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Posted on September 5, 2007 16:27