Before I started in on the document I've been writing, I decided I'd quickly check my gmail -- my personal email that I've used over the past 4 years. In my inbox among a few other emails was a rather ambiguous invite from someone I'd worked with previously.
"You have been invited to connect as friends," the message announced, and provided a link to confirm the invite. But it gave up few details as to what exactly I was accepting. I should have taken this as a sign that something shady was going on... But instead, I did the opposite -- I clicked on it, mostly because I was curious about what it was.
I was taken to a site called Bebo.com, which appeared to me to be just another social networking site, similar to myspace, facebook, or plaxo. I figured there was no reason not to join, so that's exactly what I did. The process was simple, and soon I had my own (rather empty) page. Bebo.com then informed me that the next step was to see if I had any friends already on the site by allowing it to scan my email contacts. Although I definitely am wary of sites that ask me to do this, I figured it would give me a confirmation page before it sent any invites, so I went ahead and gave it access to my address book.
Bebo provided thumbnails of each contact along with a checkbox for me to decide if I wanted to invite them as a friend. At the bottom of the page was a button to confirm the invite. It looked a little something like this (Names/emails blurred to hide identity):
Looks easy... But is it?
I unchecked all but two and then went ahead and hit "Add Friends." After that, I decided I should get to work, figuring I'd mess with my page some more when I got home later. So I turned my attention onto my design doc.
But then... something strange happened. I got 5 emails all at once into my gmail account. And they were all automated responses from places/people I'd not been in contact with for months, or even years. "That's really weird," I thought. And it only got weirder from that point on. All of a sudden I was getting tons of emails -- from people that I didn't even know -- or people that I had contacted one time in regards to a job listing or tech support for a product. It only took me a minute to figure out that this had to do with Bebo.
But what had happened? I was clueless as to how I'd sent out these invites -- "I only approved two," I thought. I decided the best thing to do is retrace my steps on the site. So again, I allowed the site to search my contacts list, and that's when I discovered that I had been deliberately set up.
After scrolling down the page, here's what I DIDN'T see the first time around, below the "Add Friends" button.
See, below the "Add Friends" button (the one that LOOKED like it was on the bottom of the page) was my ENTIRE GMAIL CONTACTS LIST. It was hundreds of email addresses -- everyone that I'd EVER sent an email to in the past four years was on it. And unfortunately for me, every single one of them had a checkmark by it as a default. With a sinking feeling in my stomach, I realized that Bebo had sent an invite to each one the first time I'd hit "Add Friends." What's worse is that the invites were sent from MY email address, making it look like I'd sent them out personally.
No cookie for you, Bebo. BAD.
Fast forward to this evening, and things have only gotten worse. I've gotten tons of emails over the course of the day and have explained the situation countless times to people who are wondering who I am and/or why the hell I've sent them an invite to this site they've never heard of. So this blog entry was a way to address that.
I apologize. Please know, it was unintentional, and I'm very sorry for spamming you!
Now, to the angry bits. This situation makes me so mad! It's sneaky and dishonest -- just bad business. And I'm not mad just because I was inconvenienced -- it's because I know this same thing has happened and will continue to happen to other people who get an invite to join Bebo.com. What are the marketing execs of Bebo thinking?! Lots of people use their email addresses for business as well as just emailing friends -- and it's a violation of their privacy and their LIFE for Bebo to take advantage of their users like this.
I think the thing that really amazed me was the response rate. At the time I'm writing this, THIRTY EIGHT people that I am responsible for spamming have joined and created an account on Bebo.com. This includes former coworkers, people I emailed by accident (by mistyping an address), and even my accountant. And very possibly, they've spammed their entire address book too. Take this as a warning: If you decide to use the site, be very careful. It's a shady situation.
To Bebo.com: Let's make it plain and simple -- if you have to trick people into joining your site, it's probably not that great to begin with. And even after you realize tricking them is a bad idea, but decide to do it anyway, they are going to be really upset when they find out what you've done. What's more, they will then associate that negative experience to your site and your brand, and then discourage their friends from using it as well. Mass spam might work well up front, but you're not going to win any fans that way. Long term retention will be poor.
And that's kinda where I'm at now. See ya later, Bebo. I'm gone -- and I'll never be back. And I'm doing what I can to make sure that others know what you're up to.
