Quechup (kway-chup) was a social networking website that came to prominence in 2007 when it used automatic email invitations for viral marketing to all the e-mail addresses in its members' address books.Saul Hansell Social network launches worldwide spam campaign The New York Times, 13 September 2007 This was described as a "spam campaign" and raised a great deal of criticism.
Address book harvesting The automatic invitation of all the contacts in the e-mail address books of people who signed up to their service was controversial for two reasons:
Without explaining intentions, Quechup required permission to access the address book. Invites were sent to all addresses in address books without permission of e-mail address owners.
This attracted a great deal of criticismHad an invite from Quechup? Jemima Kiss Digital Digest Monday 10 September 2007 GuardianUnlimited, retrieved 23 June 2008 in September 2007.
Reacting to the criticism, Quechup's parent company iDate Corporation made a public statement on 17 September 2007,The Quechup Social Networking Platform: IDate Corporation Updates Quechup's Address Book Feature Press release, Newbury – Berks – UK – 18 September 2007 stating that:
Much of the criticism focused on misleading users by hiding the nature of the feature in the 'small print' of the site termsQuetchup = Kvetchup Saturday, 1 September 2007 Digital Flotsam, Digitalflotsam.com. and not specifying it in the Quechup privacy policy, which stated only, "You agree that we may use personally identifiable information about you to improve our marketing and promotional efforts, to analyse site usage, improve our content and product offerings, and customize our Site's content, layout, and services.".Privacy policy quechup.com, retrieved 10 September 2007
While admitting the campaign was misleading, technology blogger Chris Hambly pointed out that text explaining how the feature worked was placed in normal print directly above the feature, raising the question of a user's responsibility to read what they agree to, although he noted that this explanatory text failed to clearly state what would happen.Quechup And Mass Hysteria – Chrishambly.com, 2 September 2007
In their 17 September statement, Glen Finch, Chief Technology Officer stated
This has raised the issue of users automatically 'opting in' without first understanding what they are accepting, rather than automatically 'opting out' of questionable features.
Response Quechup responded by changing how it operated its service and belatedly reassuring customers it was not acting maliciously, even if irresponsibly.
Quechup changed how its address book check worked within days,Do social network sites genuinely care about privacy? Charles Arthur The Guardian Thursday 13 September 2007, retrieved 13 September 2007 clearly giving members the option of which contacts, if any, they wanted to invite. Quechup adopted Windows Live ID Delegated Authentication, enabling Live and Hotmail users to grant limited access by logging in directly on Microsoft's secure servers.Windows Live ID Delegated Authentication grants limited access to users data without providing passwords directly to a website. Quechup is a member of SenderScoreLookup for Quechup.com SenderScore reputation database covering email senders the world's most comprehensive database of email sender reputation. Quechup fully complies with Microsoft's Sender ID Framework for email authentication and uses SPF records.The Sender ID Framework is an e-mail authentication technology – Microsoft Sender ID, retrieved 9 December 2008
The Quechup affair encouraged calls for open authentication through an OpenID system such as Yahoo's BBauth, which would allow a user to grant limited access to their data, without providing passwords directly to a website.OAuth: Open Authentication Comes Closer to Reality O'Reilly Radar Tuesday 09.25.07 Indeed, Quechup adopted Windows Live ID Delegated Authentication, an OpenID system for Windows Live and Hotmail users.
Fake invitations In a more recent development, technology journalist Robert X. Cringely raised the possibility that Quechup may be sending fake dating invitations to subscribers that attempts to get them to sign up to a premium service. In his article, Cringely stated that it was not certain if these fake e-mails were the work of what he called a "rogue Quechup affiliate who gets a commission for sign ups" or a more sophisticated automatic spam operation.Robert X. Cringely Oops, you just spilled Quechup on your pants , InfoWorld, 7 April 2008
See also Viral marketing Social networking spam Forum spam Blog spam
References
External links Quechup is rotten: don't accept invites – An article on Boing Boing. Quechup? No, Thanks – An article on Blogcritics. Quechup – An early blog complaint about Quechup's registration process from March 2006.