Lately I have been getting invites from friends to join Shelfari, the online community for book lovers. I decided to check this site and created a profile for myself. I added only five contacts to my list and can't believe they spammed everyone in my address book. I feel so stupid and just can't help thinking what the random people who received this invite from me must be wondering. Duh !
PS: Update : Googling reveals that it's not just me and there have been lotsa other victims to this shelfari spam. Folks, Beware !
Yeah, you get invites from Hikut, Face5 and all some nonsense like that, which are words from any 2 popular networking sites and once they get you, all your contacts are spammed too.
ReplyDeleteLKS
Thank God I procrastinated. Wasn't all your other online activities enough :P Anyways I have read about this before and its not just limited to shelfari. So beware before you join one.
ReplyDeleteKS & Leo, Lesson learnt and guess will be careful in the future!
ReplyDeleteWarning a couple of days late, already affected! ;--(
ReplyDeleteThanks Swe... Was about to create one today 2maro types... u saved me.
ReplyDeleteYou too, SK !
ReplyDeleteCM, Glad you delayed!
Hello,
ReplyDeleteI am an employee of Shelfari and found your blog a bit disconcerting. Shelfari by no means forces or tricks its members in anyway to sending invitations to all of their contacts. We only send emails on behalf of users who have explicitly authorized us to do so. The invite friends page clearly lists your friends in the system and all the email address of friends from your address book who from which you are given the opportunity to invite. If you don't want to send emails to your friends there is an unselect button above each section. We have actually evaluated numerous designs for this process and have chosen one that we felt was extremely clear explaining the process and what is happening.
For your friends to stop any future invitations from friends on Shelfari, they can enter their names here http://www.shelfari.com/actions/emailoptout.aspx.
All the best,
Danny from Shelfari
Danny, I appreciate your response. I am pretty positive I did not select everyone from my contact list and this has happened to a lot of other people as well! Shelfari definitely has to do something about this.
ReplyDeletetsh tsch! idhu kooda theriyadha?
ReplyDeletethere is even a song about these things
"super dubakoor yarunnu ketta,
chinna kuzhandaiyum sollum"
:D
Already affected.....
ReplyDeletejoined shelfari and enthusiastically loaded quite a few books at the start...then lost interest..its been more than a month since i browsed shelfari..
Kid, why the rubbing it in ??!!
ReplyDeleteDiwakar, I remember getting the invite from you :D
too late...it went out to everyone in my address book..but at least it reminded a few people that i exist :)
ReplyDeletenice blog you have :)
tc :)
Vishesh, Thanks and Join the club ;-)
ReplyDeleteI am the most recent victim of the Shelfari spam scam. To be nice to a coworker, I thought I would register and see what books she is reading. What followed next was an appropriate Halloween nightmare! That email went out to ex-boyfriends from ten years ago, their parents, high profile business professionals that I sent my resume to five years ago... On the up note, I ended up getting in touch with some people I had lost contact with, but on a very down note, there are thousands out in cyberspace who now think I'm a stalker through reading interests!
ReplyDeleteO beware, all other potential shelf-ari victims!
Larchmont, I hear ya!
ReplyDelete