Journal of PlanetMike

This morning I received three separate “invitations” (each to a different email address) from InfoAxe.com. Here is the text of one message (html formatting and links stripped out, my friend’s name removed):

“Friend’s Name” has added you as a friend

Is “Friend’s Name” your friend?

Click Yes if “Friend’s Name” is your friend, otherwise click No. But you have to click!

Please respond or “Friend’s Name” may think you said no 🙁

Click here to block all emails from Infoaxe Inc., Sunnyvale, CA. 94085. Privacy Policy

There is so much wrong with this email:

• The link on the “Yes” and the “No” responses to the question ‘Is “Friend’s Name” your friend?’ both go to the same page at InfoAxe.com.
• The message is not CAN-SPAM compliant, there is not a full mailing address in the message.
• The link in the footer labelled “Privacy Policy” is actually just a link to the site’s home page.
• The use of the word “friend” is deceptive. It isn’t a social networking site. This is simply an attempt at using my friend’s name as an endorsement of their service.

I wrote back to my friend:

It looks like you gave InfoAxe permission to email all of your contacts listed in your aol address book. It is really really dangerous to give any third party access to your account. Never give out your account’s password. You never know what some other company is going to do with the info they “borrow” from your account. The privacy policy for Infoaxe is extremely light on details. They don’t address the legal ramifications of giving them access to your entire browsing history for example. Their site is also a bit sketchy in that it looks to not have been updated since at least summer 2008. I’d have to recommend you not use their service. Mike

Looking through the InfoAxe web site, there really isn’t anything there that is encouraging. Their abouttheteam page is a joke. The site is copyright 2008, which is an eternity in web-time. Their job page says you need to be able to start by August 2008. Only five blog posts in a year. Taken as a whole, why would you allow this company’s software to track your web browsing, and to access your address book? Stay away.

Update: 11/20/2009 7:06am: I got a reply from my friend that used the InfoAxe service:

Mike…i didnt fill it out when i reealized what ir was….i cancelled mid way…but it must have spammed everyone….so sorry…

That really says it all. InfoAxe isn’t being very clear and/or up-front with their users about how they are going to treat your address book. Basically, the rule is: you should never give out your password to anyone! Facebook, AOL, Hotmail, Gmail, Twitter, etc… There is never a reason to give your password to any third party site.