Over the past couple of days I have received invitations from several friends, Age of Conversation co-authors and co-workers to join a social networking site called Quechup. Within hours of receiving the initial invitation via Quechup (using my friends' names as SENT FROM) I received a follow-up email directly from my friend with a RE: line along the lines of "Do NOT act on email from Quechup." During the registration process Quechup asked my friends if it could check their contacts (Google, Yahoo, others) for Quechup members they may already know. Quechup then spammed everyone their address books without consent.
A quick blog search turned up hundreds of angry posts about Quechup "hijacking" their email. The early adopters out there are furious.
The site appears to be operated by a UK outfit called iDate (though the "contact us" address is in Las Vegas.) The "conditions of use" were enough to turn me off the site - yes, I am geeknik enough to read the terms of service when I sign up for something. And I quote:
"By posting Content to any public area of Quechup.com, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to Quechup.com an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, fully paid, worldwide license to use, copy, perform, display, and distribute such information and content and to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such information and content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing."
So after a sentence warning that "You are solely responsible for the Content that you publish or display..." you get a warning that they own whatever content you post there. Should you choose to sign up for a service that spams your friends.
This kind of bad operator impacts our efforts to create real social networking connections and serves as a reminder to our social networking friends to read the terms of service, check the blogosphere, check Google news and try to get a sense of what you are getting yourself into.
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