contact scraping

NY Attorney General Unfriends Tagged.com, Files Lawsuit

NY Attorney General Unfriends Tagged.com, Files Lawsuit

By 7.9.09

New York’s crusading Attorney General, Andrew Cuomo, has a new target: social networking contact-spamming site Tagged.com. He intends to stop the company’s practices and seek fines from them. Were the fine $1 per spammy e-mail they’ve sent, the total would be $60 million. Too much?

Warning, iDrive Lite Spams All Your Gmail Contacts Without Your Permission

Warning, iDrive Lite Spams All Your Gmail Contacts Without Your Permission

By cwalters 7.9.09

Don’t install the iPhone app iDrive Lite if you value the privacy of your contact list. Avi Muchnick, one of the developers behind the free, consumer-friendly online graphics suite Aviary, used iDrive to backup his Gmail contact list when switching to a new phone. The next day, he awoke to discover that iDrive’s parent company, Pro Softnet Corp, had spammed every single entry in his contact list without his permission.

By cwalters 6.23.09

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The New York Times takes a look at “contact scraping,” which is when a website tricks you into providing access to your address book and then spams all of your friends by saying you asked them to join. Some of the offenders include Tagged.com, MyLife.com (formerly Reunion.com), and desktopdating.net. [New York Times]