Oh, how embarrassing. Travel writer Christopher Elliott signed up for StumbleUpon and due to some pre-checked boxes and a programming error, accidentally invited everyone he had ever emailed to join StumbleUpon.

Yikes. From Elliot.org:

I told the site that I had a Gmail account, and it offered to send out two categories of invitations on my behalf. Either invite friends who already have StumbleUpon accounts (good idea) or invite everyone in your address book — nearly 9,000 people — to sign up for StumbleUpon (not a good idea). I unchecked the second option and then scrolled up and checked on the first.

The system then automatically, and without my explicit approval, checked everything. By the time I knew what was happening, everyone was getting an invitation to join StumbleUpon.

Now, if you’re a friend of mine, you can probably just laugh this off. But this e-mail went to everyone I had sent a message to in the last four years. And there were people in there who I’m sure did not want to hear from me.

To them, let me say again, I’m sorry.

Now Christopher is concerned that StumbleUpon might use the purloined emails for various forms of evil. C’mon StumbleUpon, say it ain’t so.

Unethical pre-checking: How StumbleUpon hijacked my address book [Elliott] (Thanks, Nancy!)

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