No more spam from Plaxo
Comments(4) | Tagged contacts, emails, General, outlook, plaxo, spam, techcrunch, Technology 
Plaxo have made a couple of high visibility blog posts today saying that they are restricting the amount of automatic emails (a.k.a. SPAM) get sent out by users of their service. This seems like a good thing but it’s the way that they went about it that is leaving a bad taste in people’s mouths.
A summary of Todd Masonis’s post today reveals the following facts:
- Plaxo have known for a long time that they were spamming people
- But it’s OK – they were only spamming people to build up their customer base
- Now that they have enough customers, they’ll stop spamming you
- They also want to be good net-citizens, that’s their other reason for stopping the spam
- If you had joined Plaxo sooner, they would have stopped spamming you
- And by the way, it wasn’t Plaxo spamming you – it was their customers.
- (Did I mention that they’re not sorry about it either?)
I’ve been using the Plaxo service for the last couple of years and have unintentionally spammed my entire address book a couple of times, and have been flamed for it too. Especially from the people that I have no reason to stay in contact with! Plaxo have always made it too easy to spam your address book – I have never seen a warning message pop up that says: “You are about to send out hundreds of emails – are you sure you want to do this?”
But moving on, they say they are going to stop the spam and that’s a good thing. Apart from that, Ive always enjoyed using their service – it works great for keeping your Outlook data synchronised between multiple computers or profiles. Let’s hope that Plaxo hasn’t caused too much of a bad name for itself among the influentials.
UPDATE: Plaxo have now made a public apology, see my post here.
Stuart said: “I have never seen a warning message pop up that says: “You are about to send out hundreds of emails – are you sure you want to do this????
There has always been a warning popup that says “You are about to send emails to XX people. Are you sure you want to do this?”
If Plaxo is guilty of anything, it’s not protecting you from yourself.
btw: The screen BEFORE the popup says:
“You are about to update the following people:
bold button –> [Send Now]
Then, after you click Send Now, you get the POPUP that says:
“Are you sure that you want to send out xx update requests?
No Yes”
This was our sincere attempt at making it as clear as possible. Obviously, it was not clear enough and hence our decision–albeit later than some people are happy with–to make changes.
Rikk – thanks for your comments. You’re right, there is a pop-up now but there didn’t use to be. I haven’t run that wizard for a long time now because of the spam. I find it arrogant that one of the Plaxo founders can say that you guys were relying on the mass mailings to build up customers, but now that you’ve got enough customers you can stop them now.
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