Stay away from Quechup

Two days after I joined Quechup and AFTER I had cancelled my membership it has just spammed my whole address book.

I am so sorry.

Comments

[Alex Manchester]

I was just about to ask that on your last post. Others are reporting the same problem.

A big oops by Quechup.

[Niall Cook]

Thanks to your Twitter update, I just clicked the unsubscribe link anyway.

[Julian Elve]

Glad I checked here first!

[Karl]

It did exactly the same thing to me yesterday, after I deleted my account because I decided it was a pretty rubbish dating site. I only realised what it had done when I got a bunch of invites from myself to my own alternate email addresses.

[Richard Hare]

Oops - me too.

[Bill Ives]

Euan - Thanks for this. I joined after getting three invites from trusted friends. So how can I get out.? I went to the site but did not see any way to cancel. Thanks, Bill

[Nic Price]

I didn't think I'd find myself saying this but thank goodness for Facebook! (where I saw your status update)

What's the story with Quechup I wonder?

[Euan Semple]

There was an option to de-register. However, despite the fact that I did that the bloody system is still spamming people from my account but I can't access it!

Best of luck.

[Jon Husband]

I was wondering ... stopped for a moment, wondered whether to check it out, then as it was from you, went ahead.

As Nic mentioned, something FB got more right.

[Marc Wright]

Saved by the nick of time. There is something to be said for dealing with emails at the end of the day.

[Roo Reynolds]

Interesting how badly this kind of feature, when implemented so badly, can have the the opposite effect of what was intended.

I normally sign up to absolutely everything, but in this instance I was spammed a few times and decided against it.

[Bill Ives]

Euan - Thanks I was able to get out. I guess one of the benefits of being on Apple Mail and not one of the mainstream tools is that my address list never gets given out.

[amba]

I joined, because it appeared to come from you. Then I became suspicious because it did look like a dating site (what's your sign??). However, I did not enter any address books! Ha ha. If they bother me, I'll try to get out of it

[Caryn]

Oops - I accepted your invite yesterday.... will go back in and cancel!

[John Connell]

Euan - Whois and domaintools.com shows Quechup as hosted on the same server as a dating site ('nuff said) called idatecorp.com, and a few forums have offered email addresses for the people who run the latter, noting that they are the same nice people who have set up Quechup. If anyone is interested in having a go at the idiots, their addresses are:
mark@idatecorp.com
glen@idatecorp.com
audreyr@idatecorp.com
paul@idatecorp.com
justin@idatecorp.com

[Sam Berrisford]

Thanks for the prompt clarification Euan. I thought it was a little bit odd when I got your invitation - either that or you were trying to tell me something!

Anyway, I was out of there inside five minutes when I got a message from CheekyChica in Bolton wanting to be my friend!

As far as I know, nobody has been spammed from my address list yet and I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Could they be legally vulnerable under Invasion of Privacy or breach of the Data Protection Act? I guess its a new area of the law, I would be interested if you have any thoughts on this.

[Alek Lotoczko]

Euan/all, they got me this morning: I went through every contact in my Gmail and inserted spurious characters into each address. I then cancelled my membership. This morning at around 06:00 Quechup spammed everyone in my address book using the email addresses as they were when I signed up on Tuesday!

[Rupert Shanks]

Got me too!

Ironic that my need for online friends may leave me with a few less real ones.

[Cheryl]

Seeing you as a trustworthy source for anything new, I immediately signed up and fairly quickly extracted myself after I saw your message. Alas, too late. My entire address book has been spammed too. I am still reaping the consequences with daily explanations/apologies to old acquaintances and new business contacts and deleting many messages from a Quechup loop. Thanks to John for letting us know who to complain to...

[Euan Semple]

What pains me most about this is the that people's trust in me made them vulnerable.

The fact that Quechup was dishonest about what it was doing and that I very, very rarely directly send links to people, preferring instead to post to my blog and let people make their own minds up, doesn't take the pain away very much.

[Ian Betteridge]

I got caught by Quechup as well - and, as others have reported, it spammed my address book AFTER I'd deleted the account.