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Quechup Just Spammed My Address Book

posted on September 1, 2007

Any of us who join any new site or service these days have gotten use to seeing the familiar “see if anyone in  your address book is already using the site” feature where it’ll look through your address book and tell you who are members. In most situations you can connect with those already using the service and then have the OPTION of if you want to invite other people.

I got an invite to check out Quechup from a podsafe artist that I dig so I figured I’d check it out, sign up and see what happens. None us need another social network site, but I also think signing up for an account just to check it out is a good thing.

I had it check my address book and it found a whopping 2 people on the network I knew. I sent them friend requests and then proceeded to check out the rest of the site.

Fast forward a few minutes and my inbox starts filling up with auto return messages, out of office messages and all sorts of other things. I couldn’t figure out what was going on and it turns out that this system WITHOUT MY PERMISSION just sent invites to my whole address book.

Hey staff at Quechup, what gives you the right to do that? I’ll reach out to my contacts when I believe in something, but don’t you dare do it without my permission.

If you got one of these from me I apologize. I don’t ever invite or recommend until I think there might be some value in something and right now I’m not seeing ANY value in this site since they are obviously clueless to how things need to work.

This type of shit really pisses me off. Blatant cluelessness is inexcusable.

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  • http://stevegarfield.com steve garfield

    “You received this because C.C. Chapman knows and agreed to invite you.”

    Ironic.

  • http://behindthebuzz.com Rachel Clarke

    I wondered what the invite was. Like you, I sign up to these things to see what they are about and understand if they are impactful. I won’t be checking this one out then!

  • http://www.iprong.com Bill Palmer

    No need to apologize. They’re in the wrong, not you. Lucky for me, they’re not even sophisticated enough to have a vCard import option, and since I’m not a gmail/yahoo/aol(!!) user, I was off the hook as far the auto-spam quotient.

    Didn’t think to google them until far too late into the setup process, and was stunned to find that after their own site, nearly every entry on the first results page is people complaining about the auto-spam. Came here to see what you’d have to say about it, and here you are already apologizing for something that wasn’t even your fault. Don’t sweat it.

  • http://www.jaffejuice.com Joseph Jaffe

    I received 5+ invites from “you”

    What a bunch of losers…assuming their offering was any good, it doesn’t matter anymore. They’ve blown their chances 100% with the influencers (you, me, everyone reading this)

    Pathetic.

  • http://www.24stgeorge.com Dale Cruse

    I received that invite from you, CC.

    I suggest digging in to their Privacy Policy and seeing if they violate it in any way. If so, there may be cause for redress.

  • http://inoveryourhead.net julien

    yeah, i got it five times like Jaffe. he’s 100% right too, it won’t be “sweeping the globe” as they claim.

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  • http://matthewebel.com Matthew Ebel

    Yeah, I got six invites from you. Wow… am I really in your address book in six different ways? Time to update your database. ;)

    Pax,
    Matthew

  • http://www.cc-chapman.com C.C.

    Yeah not only did it e-mail everyone without permission but thanks to gMail doing such a good job of remembering every e-mail address you ever write a note to, people are getting more then one.

    My account is deleted off their site. I’ve seen TONS of similar blog posts like this out there.

    They broke my trust which in turn went down the pipe to everyone and I’m sorry this happened.

  • http://nextup.Wordpress.com doug Meacham

    Hi CC. I think they actually do “get it”. As innovative spammers, they have effectively leveraged the constant wave of new socnet creation to build a powerful email capture tool knowing that early adopters with large contact lists will sign up to check it out. I guess we all need to be more cautious with granting access to our information.

  • http://EdRoberts.TV Ed Roberts

    I tried to send a Twitter DM to ask about it right after getting it, but that’s when Twitter died. I’m glad I held off on checking it out.

  • http://karenjcardoza.com Karen (aka MrsB)

    Chalk one up for being super busy to do anything about the invite! Especially since the real power in Social Media is the unwritten “endorsements” by those that you trust to sort of test the waters first. It’s amazing how we get into that mindset of not wanting to be on the outside looking in.. but quite frankly, if there never was another new “in” place cropping up, that would be fine by me.

  • http://idreamincolors.com Nico

    I only got two invites. I guess you doesn’t like me as much as you like other people ;)

    Seriously now, Julien suggested marking these emails as spam. The emails were sent as from your account, so we’d be marking YOU as spam, wouldn’t we? I was going to leave Julien a comment but he closed the comments for that post (go figure)

  • http://www.richpalmer.com/blog Rich Palmer

    I, too, was victimized by this inappropriate and shady system of bringing in new people. I followed CC’s lead/invite to “take a look.” So much for “choosing” whom I should like to invite. Unfortunately, I looked into two different gmail user accounts and it got all of them — of course, some more than once.

    Here’s the unsubscribe message I gave them as I cancelled my account:
    “Your methods for inviting people have been terribly misrepresented. The method of inviting people by spamming our entire email address book is shady and unprofessional.

    I was looking in my address book to CHOOSE the people I wanted to invite, not to send a mass email. There were people there that I would never invite to a social network site. There were group lists that became spam targets and there are potential professional associations that received multiple messages.

    I will NOT be using your service now or ever again…”

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  • http://chrishambly.com Chris Hambly

    The problem is just being “sneaky” about it..

    I had many invites, I took one, yours Mr Chapman.

    Now when I created my account the second page displayed the email icons, and a box to enter the password for the email account. OF COURSE I didn’t enter, I spotted a rat a mile off….

    I just hit home and went somewhere else WITHOUT entering the password for my email account..

    Of course it was not clear and they should make it clear to exactly what they are doing, namely being slightly sneaky making one think it is part of actually creating a valid account.

    I still have my account, I’ll have a look around after a day or so.

  • http://digitalflotsam.org P-Dub

    I too, might have at least given it a “look see” if I had received just ONE invitation, actually from C.C. But the minute that every one of my mailboxes lit up with a separate invitation, I knew it couldn’t have come from C.C. and I instantly realized his address book had been mined.

    I’m renaming them “Kvetchup”. As a former New Yorker I am entitled to abuse Yiddish :-)

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  • Giff Constable

    Really adds new depth to the term “viral marketing” doesn’t it!

    CC, no worries. Not your fault. It did get them a bunch of new users, but not happy ones. It will generate some buzz, but not good buzz. I can understand a new player in the socnet space deciding to be aggressive since they’re late to the party, but gah!

    Sure glad I didn’t fill in the gmail info when I registered!

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  • http://www.tonycarcieri.com Tony Carcieri

    Dude I was wondering why I got 3 invites. No worries. Going to delete the account now.

  • http://www.adpuppet.com AdPuppet

    Also going to go delete the account now. Ironically, this came into my junk email folder but I clicked through on the faith of the CC Chapman factor. Thanks for writing the post, now we all know how much of a scam they are.

  • http://www.murphyssaloon.com Hieronymus Murphy

    Hey, C.C.,

    I suspected something was fishy when I received identically worded invites from you and Rich Palmer, and like you, I was told just 2-3 people in my address book were in/on Quechup. Then, my worst fears were realized when I started getting automatic “out-of-office” responses from people with whom I’d traded maybe two emails max in Gmail.

    I think the shitstorm Quechup has unleashed won’t hit full force until after the holiday weekend is over. Then … man, I won’t want to be them. I’ll be interested to see if they have the grace, or maybe the stones required, to apologize.

    Knuckleheads!

  • http://shakewellbeforeuse.com Ariel Waldman

    Just twittered to ask anyone who received invites to spam and/or complain up their inbox at privacy@quechup.com . Seriously, how can you be a social networking site and be THIS out of touch with the interweb? Needless to say, seems like there will be a global boycott of this “social network that’s sweeping the globe”. Ugh.

  • http://www.johnpiercy.com John Piercy

    Hey CC
    thanks for the email and the headsup
    Im heading over to Quechup and delete everything there .
    Will alert my friends on Twitter and Pownce
    Have a good weekend .

    jp

  • http://LenEdgerly.com Len Edgerly

    CC, I fell for it because I respect what you’re doing in the socnet space. It would be helpful if you could pass along whatever steps we should be taking to defend against pernicious effects of this. I changed the password on the e-mail account I used, which presumably sent out messages to everyone in my address book. Did they go out from Address Book on my Mac, which is what I use for sending e-mail from all my accounts? I’m unlcear exactly whom I may have exposed to this threat. Do I need to send everyone in my Address Book an email warning them not to act on the invite? Since you are a leader in this space, maybe you and others can take the lead in providing us with very clear steps we need to take. Thanks, CC!

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  • http://www.ibert.be Bert Van Wassenhove

    Yep CC, happened to me too. The best revenge is Google. Try entering their name in Google and you’ll find an interesting list of blogposts right below their own site.
    Maybe if we cross-link enough we can even get above their own site.
    http://www.ibert.be/2007/07/quechup-disaster.html

  • http://billcammack.com Bill Cammack

    I got invited “by you” as well. No prob. I didn’t use that “find other contacts” function because I only went on the site to check out how it worked… not meet up with other friends on it.

    Needless to say, that site uses completely underhanded tactics, and I’ll be on the lookout for stuff like this from now on. I won’t be accepting any more “auto-invites” from people without finding out directly from them what’s going on.

  • http://chrishambly.com Chris Hambly

    Hey CC and all..

    Here are my thoughts…

    http://www.chrishambly.com/content/quechup-and-mass-hysteria

    And personally I didn’t feel spammed by you CC..

    :)

    If you had opted to invite me it would have looked the same I would guess.

  • http://radio-boomslang.shacknet.nu/~bb/ Barney Boomslang

    Uh, kids, please. You try out a service by _uploading_ your whole address book? Or even giving it access to your online contacts (in the case of googlemail or other like services)? I don’t even trust facebook that much to give them that data …

    I can understand someone wants to try out a new service and registers with it (allthough it’s beyond me why anybody would need more than a hand full of services and quite frankly, if testing something out, I use fake data), but giving a new site you don’t know access to your contacts? That just calls out for spam …

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  • http://danieljohnsonjr.blogspot.com Daniel Johnson, Jr.

    C.C., I respectfully have to disagree with you when you say, “this system WITHOUT MY PERMISSION just sent invites to my whole address book.” Does it not say in the user agreement that they would be able to do that? Maybe not those exact words, but something similar.

    Actually, I found these terms from P-Dub’s blog post:

    “Please note that by visiting Quechup.com.com you are accepting the practices described in this privacy policy and conditions of use.”

    “We share much of our data, including personally identifiable information about you, with our parent and/or subsidiaries that are committed to serving your online needs and related services, throughout the world.”

    Maybe it’s time for us to start paying closer attention to the Privacy Policies of these socnets before signing up.

    Make it a great day!

  • http://www.cc-chapman.com C.C.

    And yes I have read their terms and they clearly state that any information I enter into their system can be shared. That is par for the course with any social network.

    That is VERY different then sending out messages of any sort, with my name on them and to my contacts. THAT is not covered by their terms of service. There is a difference.

  • http://inoveryourhead.net julien

    cc, just for the record, i marked these emails as spam and had no problem receiving your emails afterwards. please share this with people, it’ll work.

  • http://www.murphyssaloon.com Hieronymus Murphy

    For anyone pissed off enough to write a letter or make a call, from their site, there’s this address:

    iDate Corporation
    6767 West Tropicana Ave.
    Suite 207
    Las Vegas, NV 89103

    Their advisors (including law firms on both coasts) are here: http://www.idatecorp.com/advisors.php

    And this form: http://www.idatecorp.com/contact.php can be used to contact them.

  • http://taotakashi.wordpress.com Christian Scholz / Tao Takashi

    Even if it’s covered in their TOS it’s bad practice and violates trust. So they moved themselves into a bad position already.

    Was there actually any sort of apologize?

    And did anybody stay in their service and wrote some blog post about it on their site?

    It also shows again the need for some better service of defining your friends in a central place and not by giving everybody access to your address book or any other data.

    (which reminds me of openid… )

  • Melissa

    As some here have pointed out, I probably should have known better when it offered to check for *matches* and found none. My Gmail address book mostly has family and close friends and lots of online shopping customer service bots. I guess the Gap won’t be joining my Quechup network any time soon.

  • Mike Dell

    I was just honored that I’m in your address book :)

    I never answer requests like that till I hear CC, Leo, or Adam talk about it on their podcasts.

    I have enough with Twitter and facebook.

    -Mike

  • http://www.JustOneMoreBook.com Andrea

    And I was so flattered that you’d thought of inviting little old me.

    Double-whammy.

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  • http://lumma.de Nico

    thanks for the mail, it is always good to stay in touch :)

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  • http://www.JustOneMoreBook.com Andrea

    On the brighter side, the wide range of extremely understanding and extremely hostile responses I’ve been receiving from the hundreds of inadvertent email recipients would make an excellent social/psychological study if anyone’s looking for a thesis topic….

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  • Arian Ardie

    Given that Idate Corp. the people that own quechup.com is enlightened and socially responsible I am sure that they would love to hear your comments about their service and ethical standards. You can write to Mark Finch the CEO at mark@idatecorp.com, Glen Finch, CTO at glen@idatecorp.com. I think that a special note should also be sent to Justin Small the marketing manager responsible for “driving high levels of visitors to the website to create a fast-growing membership base” justin@idatecorp.com.

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