No, I’m not going to try to calm down and simply “report” the “issue” to the facebox authors. I’m going to scream loud about how freakin bastards they are and how much do I hate what they just did to me.
So, the story is short, I received an invitation to facebox from a few of my colleagues and ignored it, but since I’m deeply interested in social networks, when I received another invitation from a friend of mine whom I didn’t see for long time, I decided to try it. Out of curiosity and to get a better feeling what’s up in the social net.
During the account configuration, there are 5 steps, of which step 3 is the most crucial, destructive and horrible.
So in step 3, you’re asked to give your Gmail address and password so that Facebox can reconnect you with your friends.
Natural reaction of my mind (and probably tens of other users) is that they want to cross check who of my Gmail contact is in Facebox already and create some kind of connection between me and those people. Easy. I like the idea. I also expect that Facebox will simply show a list of relations and allow me to choose which of those I want to connect with.
So, naive being as I am, I gave my pass (the procedure step is followed by the assurance that Facebox will use it ethically) and… few moments later I started receiving invitation to Facebox from Zbigniew Braniecki on all maillist I’m subscribed to, all my other emails I had in my Gmail book etc. At the same time, I’m sure that tons of my friends, co-workers and people on various mailing lists started receiving polish spam messages from ME, that invites them to Facebox.
How rude, how stupid, how countr-netiquette can they be more? It’s so cruel. I feel so stupid now, and I want to say a huge SORRY to all my contacts who just have been spammed by this facebox :/
I’m not sure if there’s any effective way to punish them for this, but I’d like to scream it loud – DO NOT TRY FACEBOX! – it’s a perfect example of the company I’d like to get rid from the market. It’s not a stupidity. It’s vandalism.
If you know the way to react in more serious ways – publishing info about how they act to bigger audience, or going with more formal steps to make them stop doing this – help me. I have energy to stop them.
P.S. Yes, if you received the same from Datrio or Honey, it’s still a SPAM!!!
P.P.S. I received a response from Facebox team to my email “it’s a bug and we’re working on a fix. We hope you’ll enjoy staying with us and promoting to your friends” – over my dead body…
P.P.P.S Honey and Michulk also blogged about their cases (very similar to mine)