An article in New York Times on Saturday highlights a common practice among Web sites with a social network element. He called scraping contact, and it occurs when the site asks you to enter an email address and password. Then all your contacts receive emails inviting them to join the site.
Michael Argast, a security analyst for Sophos Internet security company, said that this practice is not new, but has become increasingly popular in the last three to six months. He says, "There are many shades of gray. Some social networking sites, like Facebook, are fairly straightforward in asking if you want to share information about your friends. Others are much less scrupulous".
the author of the article describes his own experience with Tagged, a photo sharing site. It received emails from two different contacts, asking it click to see the photos they had posted on Tagged. When she clicked her Tagged prompted for their email address and password before viewing pictures. But as it turned out, there were no pictures of him to see, and now the original email was sent to all contacts. by leveraging the outgoing connection between the author and his contacts, Tagged managed to increase its user population. the e-mail spam recipients asked, "is -Alina your friend "and discouraged them from ignoring the email by adding:" please respond or Alina may think you said no, "and includes a picture of a scowling face. The founder and CEO of Tagged claims that a software glitch caused these unintended emails to send, but other sites have also been known to scrape contact without the explicit permission of the user. The Times article mentions MyLife.com and DesktopDating.net.
The author acknowledges that, contrary to the more harmful spam, it is just annoying and embarrassing. But in general, it is important for Internet users to be more vigilant about their e-mail addresses and contact lists. Even when a social networking site clearly asks if the user would like to invite contacts, many people do not pay enough attention to notice it.
Each time a Web request your email address and password site, consider the consequences before turning briskly on this information. It can be used to spam your friends, or it can be recorded and used to access other personal data, putting you at risk for identity theft.
To avoid recieving junk emails like this, consider Internet security software that includes a robust spam filter. And avoid sending them involuntarily, or expose sensitive information that could be used against you, do not provide your name and password to a site such as Yahoo or Google to a third party site, and not to use the same username and password for multiple websites.