Bad Yaari: Social spam isn’t okay

Posted by Kenneth
January 6, 2008

So I get an e-mail today from one of my contacts in my GMail with the subject line: XXX sent you a friend request on Yaari… and so I decided to check it out. What’s Yaari you ask? Well I honestly don’t know myself. The website says that it’s a social networking sites for Indian youth. Wait, why should I be interested in signing up for a site that’ll connect me with Indian youths?

But that’s besides the point. So I look online to find out what is Yaari. Sure, before you sign up for something, you should figure out WHAT the site is about. Apparently what really turned me off is that when I googled it, the following description came up:

Lost connection to MySQL server at ‘reading initial communication packet’, system error: 0.

Wow, that’s a really good description of what your site is. And so I decided to take a look at the site a little bit more by looking at other reviews of the site and came up with a site that tells horror stories about what happened when they signed up for Yaari. It’s not a social networking site per se, but rather a way to scrounge around your e-mail account and steal your contacts in your address book so they can spam them with information too. Once you’ve signed up, you need to enter in your e-mail account password for either Yahoo, Hotmail, GMail, etc. and can’t use any other non-free e-mail service. Usually sites will let you bypass this, but according to this article of someone who tried it, Yaari won’t let you.

Now this whole trend with Yaari is somewhat bizarre. Whoever is in charge of Yaari needs to get their marketing hat on right. It’s a startup company based in Atlanta, GA and you gotta be smarter about this. Yes, you have a startup and need to get people interested in your application, but do you really think invading people’s privacy is a smart thing? Why would you think that just because one person said sure they’ll sign up, that gives you the right to sneak into their e-mail and send out invitations to their contacts. C’mon…your marketing folks are really stupid then. You need to read the CAN-SPAM act and now your company has such bad press since a lot of people (like me) are going to blog about how stupid your policy and procedures are and no one will sign up. So kiss your investment good-bye, Yaari.

If you get a Yaari invitation, delete it and don’t sign up. Save us all the hassle and avoid the site at all cost. It’s now the social networking site for…nobody!

Popularity: 17% [?]

E-mail Marketing, Marketing, Social Media, Web 2.0

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Viewing 3 Comments

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    I wish I had read this blog before I foolishly fell for this Yaari e-mail spam scam. Instead, because the invitation came from a friend I just went ahead with it. To it's credit, hotmail placed this in my junk folder but like an idiot I still went ahead with it
    • ^
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    Everyone,
    Are you all going to complain or are you going to DO SOMETHING?
    Yaari's practices are not just unethical they are ILLEGAL.
    They contravene the U.S. CAN-SPAM Act.
    http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/buspubs/can...

    1) Go to the FTC page http://www.ftc.gov/spam/
    2) Click on "File a Complaint" (on the left column).
    It's a bit slow so be patient.
    3) Click on "FTC Complaint Assistant" (On the right)
    4) Is your complaint concerning identity theft - NO (hit next)
    5) Dissatisfaction with other Business Practices (hit next)
    6) Select "Internet" and "Other Internet Practices" (hit next)
    7) I have a complaint about my options (or lack of) for protecthing my privacy online. (you can also select option 1 if you have children in your email list). (hit next).
    8) Do you know the name of the company (Yes) (hit next)
    For the company details enter www.yaari.com. You can use Prerna@yaari.com for the email. (Just put zero dollars).
    For Step 5, I put the following in the additional info
    "This company is a social networking site. They contacted me by sending an invitation that impersonated the email identity of someone known to me. After signing up on their site http://www.yaari.com I found out that they take all of the addresses from my email address book and send invitation emails to each contact that claim to be from me. I believe that this practice contravenes the U.S. CAN-SPAM Act."

    -- Please don't just grumble. Make a difference: File a complaint with the FTC.
    Tim
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    • v
    I just signed up for this just because a former neighbor of mine did.
    Now I want out
    Does anyone know how to optout of this foolish thing?
    I also made the mistake of giving my email password....
    Help!..........
    Dave

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