Reunion.spam surpasses Comcast for the title of “antichrist”

Reunion.spam surpasses Comcast for the title of “antichrist”

May 21st, 2008 | Author: Michael

I’ve had my problems with Comcast. But, in their favor, I’ve been contacted by someone who has agreed to help me with my issues as soon as I get him the information (note to self, send this weekend).

But there’s a new evil on the block. New to me anyway. Had I bothered to check them out before I signed on, I would have known that. I’m talking about Reunion.com. Don’t go there, don’t look them up. You’ve been warned. I will not provide the link.

I explained a little bit of this last night, but here’s what happened, play by play.

Yesterday at work I received an “inviation” to join Reunion.com from a former collegue and still friend. Since I trusted her, and since I was already a member of Plaxo and LinkedIn, I thought I could give one more site a try.

So, I signed up. But instead of entering my work email, I used my gmail account. Reunion.com then proceeded to invite every single contact in my address book, well over 500, including people I know are dead, people I haven’t communicated with in years, every online bill service that I use and more. They all got a message saying I was looking for them and asking for them to join.

I was horrified when I realized what had happened. I tried to go through Reunion.com to correct the matter, but only made it worse by sending those same 500 people a message that I’d updated my account. What I discovered is that you can’t email the people in your own dang inbox from Reunion.com if you don’t “upgrade.” And there are NO refunds.

At this point, I felt my contacts, friends and enemies needed an explanation. So I send a mass email from my gmail account apologizing and encouraging them to delete anything from Reunion.com. That was probably against my better judgment because most people with an IQ higher than my age already knew not to open the first email.

But my joy continued when gmail locked my account for 24 hours for sending 500 copies of the same email. (Absolutely not gmail’s fault, it’s their policy. I’d just never had need to know it before)

In the end, I did actually hear from some folks I haven’t heard from in a while. But, after all, they were in my in-box.

So after digging around I found that I’m not the only one who has ever had a problem with Reunion.com. Read some of these:

Rick’s Spam Digest (from 2006): Classic Spam: Reunite This! (dot-com mainsleaze spam)

Intuitive Systems: Reunion.com: it’s sad when reasonable companies succumb to spamming (March 2006)

Worse, for a company like Reunion.com, it’s like throwing mud into the drinking fountain. The company could have a good reputation and could even be doing good work matching up long-lost friends and lovers, but with this sort of garbage email, I don’t have any patience for them or for their style of business.

Doc Searls Weblog: (May 10, 2008) Reunion.com spam alert

I am among the least litigious people on Earth. But I can’t help but wonder … Could I (or we) sue these bastards for false representation? Invasion of privacy?

I’m in!

The Consumerist: Reunion.com Will Scrape Your Address Book, Then Spam Your Contacts (April 16, 2008)

Reunion.com dupes new members into signing up by sending them an email that pretends to be from an acquaintance who’s been looking for them (on Reunion.com, naturally). After signing up, the site sucks in your contacts and immediately begins spamming them to join by sending out a similar email. If one of those people then signs up at Reunion.com, their contact list is scooped up and the cycle starts all over again, like a social engineering version of a virus or parasitic infestation. Maybe this is why Reunion.com can claim to register about 1 million new members every month.

Just in case you need to know, the creator and CEO of Reunion.com is Jeffrey Tinsley. Thought you might like to know.