No Quechup please

Quechup - a social networking site that starts each new subscription with anti-social spamming!

I'm interested in social networks and community sites, so I've joined many such services, only a few of which I actually use with any regularity.  A few minutes ago, I got an invitation to Quechup and went ahead and signed up.  Unfortunately, I didn't Google their name and check other people's comments in advance. [I'm just back from vacation and not thinking???]   Worse, I blasted through their sign up procedure without my usual caution.

During the signup process, Quechup.com suggests it search your address book to check if some of your email contacts have already signed up as well, so as to give the networking process a head start.  I've seen this before and I'm usually very suspicious, but this time I acted like a total newbie.  I let them see one of my address books, in which they found only the person who had invited me.  What they didn't mention is they immediately spam each of the addresses they got access to.

If you got such spam, I deeply apologize.  I've been on-line for years.  I should know better.  I do know better!  What else can I say?  I'm sorry.

Comments

[Susan Humphrey]

I have tried myspace and facebook but every profile is of a 23 year old doing jello shots off someone abs...this is networking for professionals? Dont drink the koolaid about facebook, there's a very low percentage of profesisonals let alone employed people using that. I have only seen 2 sites that have professional profiles that impresses me. There is a site called Linkedin and a site called Congoo. Both those sites have some high quality executive profiles and a serious feel to the site.

[Brough]

Indeed, I use LinkedIn for my professional network, primarily because it lets me keep track of people I've met professionally who I want to stay in touch with but who I am unlikely to contact for months or years at a time.

I am on Facebook as well, but primarily because of nieces and nephews, friends in academia, and more recently, young recently hired engineers. I.e., so far Facebook is mostly for those in college, working at a college or who have graduated in the past 2-4 years. That may be changing since Facebook opened up their APIs but it's too early to tell for sure.

[hayley]

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.

[Heidi]

"Brough" posted this exact comment as "Hayley" on my post. Pretty transparent damage control.

[brough]

Dr. Heidi,

Thanks for the comment, from which I've learned two things.

1. "Hayley" is posting identical text in multiple blogs that complain about Quechup invitation spam. I wonder who Hayley actually is?

2. The formatting of my comments section is confusing, as you apparently mistook my name on the comment above as the name of the poster of what was actually the comment by "Hayley."

I'll poke around and see if Typepad offers an easy way to change the layout of my comments section. Thank you!

[Jeff Herz]

I just got busted for the exact same thing. It was late, I was not paying attention, now I have egg on my face with all my contacts, professional and person. Does anyone know if there is any to pressure them to stop this practice?

What a sham.

[brough]

Jeff, Thanks for the comment.

I have to admit that I was so grossed out that I just wrote the blog post. I never tried to actually contact anyone at Quechup and, at this point, I've stopped thinking about them. Maybe someone should try and approach them? (Or maybe "hayley" who commented above is on the Quechup staff?)

On the other hand, if they are at all awake, they should have a Google alert open for the name 'Quechup' and thus should see the level of public complaints they are generating.

[Tom]

In regard to quechup, contact the federal government at spam@uce.gov, cert and your networkk provider. Enough complaints will get this company shut down.

[karen]

I just got caught in the same trap. Now I'm trying to clean up the huge mess. (sigh) I'm smarter than this!

[SuezanneC Baskerville]

I just fell for it too.

Does it do anything bad other than spam people and not really let you post in it's blog?

Does it attempt to install malware or turn your computer into a credit card number stealing zombie or any such things as that?

[Gunner]

I agree totally. Other sites like WAYN and facebook/myspace all use this underhand technique, and people should stop using them

[karl herber]

That one just caught me out too. I only knew about it because it sent me invites from myself to my own alternate addresses. Seems to have hit a lot of people this weekend.

[Steve]

Brough,
Thanks for the heads up on Quechup. Its staring to be more and more a 'visible' site, and so the warning is extremely timely. Will be posting about it myself (referenced back here, of course!)
Steve

[JT]

Hayley works for Quechup

[woodstock]

Nope, I didn't read. Yes, it's my fault that they have access to my address book.

The one thing I haven't seen in all this talk is the advice that I think would be pretty basic if you've been caught in this: change the password on whatever account you gave them access to. No where have I seen anyone mention how long this shady spam farming goes on (BTW, Quechup sent their "invites" out to my contacts *after* I closed my account...how can that be valid network building if I'm not still on the site? Clearly, it's e-mail harvesting) so best change your password if you haven't already.

[Thorzdad]

I almost got sucked-in too. I was awake enough to recognize the bad feeling I was having about what Quechup was asking me for...name and password to my contacts. Scanning closely, I noticed a way around this "requirement", buried in the sales copy on the page. Copy that most people would just ignore. There's a sentence about "not wanting to share your contacts at this time", or something like that. It's a link that bypasses the contact sharing function. Click that, and you're done.

Of course, once I got registered, I found that the friend who supposedly invited me wasn't even a member. At least her name or nickname wasn't showing up in any search, and didn't appear in my friends list.

Quechup's a loser even before it got off the starting line. Avoid like the plague.

[Linda]

Thank GOODNESS for this post! I just got an email from someone I don't know...obviously this person had my name in their address book from some previous group I must have belonged to. Thanks to you, I will NOT be even going to that site!

[Zeth]

I got an invite from a friend, so started to sign in. Got to the "check your addressbook" page, but there was no security lock icon in the status bar, so I didn't trust them. I didn't see anything ON THAT PAGE that led me to believe that they were going to send invites to anyone at all, so I don't know what "Hayley" is talking about. It needs to be CLEAR on the front page what the actions are.

I don't believe someone just because it says "we won't save your password."

Yeah, right.

Anyway, I posted (with same name) on another blog, if you see it, it's probably me. And I don't work for Quechup.

[mehmet Poyraz]

I would like to say thank you for useful this article.

[Logo designer]

I had a bunch of invite e-mails this September from people whom I could never suspect to invite me to such network.
So, now the mystery is solved.
I wonder did they thought about consequences and community reaction to this dirty trick?