WAYN - Where Are You Now? Warning
To everyone in my GMail address book: I’m sorry. I had no idea that WAYN or Where Are You Now? was such a horrible spammer.
I’ll say it again, for Google juice purposes: Stay the hell away from WAYN. Where Are You Now is a spam site that in advertendly sent a spam message to every single person in my address book.
I’m a big anti-spam guy, and I’ve designed and implemented anti-spam solutions for my previous employer(s). This is not something I’ve ever done before, and quite frankly I’m furious. As soon as I saw the email message bounce from a mailing list, I immediately went and removed all of the addresses and then myself from WAYN.
It seems interesting that there is an Unregister Button that completely removes you from the site. Now…why would you need this button if you weren’t doing something amazingly inconvenient and spammy? I don’t know either. I’ve never seen it before, and it sure looks suspicious.
I originally thought that someone actually wanted to get back in touch with me after sending what was probably another unbeknownst spam message. I went through the process of signing up, and when you’re done WAYN wants to know the trips you’ve taken in your life.
And all I can think is “Trips I’ve taken? What? Screw this.” And I closed it. And here I thought it was a social metagroup of some sort.
WAYN are spammers. Where Are You Now is spamtastic. Stay away.
I’m sorry to those who got the spam. I’m so pissed it made me put this up today instead of an actual writing piece. Meh.
UPDATE: Well, it’s ironic and interesting to me that I’ve gotten back in touch with a few people because of this post and the subsequent email to all of my Gmail contacts apologizing for my blunder.
However, the main reason for this update is to give my friend Chris Mellard a birthday shout-out. He’s a family friend and my daughter Annie just loves him. Whenever we talk about someone coming over, he’s the first person she asks for. He turns 21 today, so I expect some drunkenness to occur soon in his future.
18 Comments:
Ha, I was thinking about writing a post about how lame you were for sending the cute invite out. No, spam or not, social clubs are baaaad.
While I do not condone WAYN, and I think that they are scum, I want to make one thing clear:
It was your fault, entirely!
Many things are broken on the internet that rely on stupid or 'next next next' people to make them wrong.
Why I am qualified to blame you? Because I got a WAYN invite (several) but the first got me off gaurd, as I had just emailed that person a day or so previous.
HOWEVER, when filling in my gmail address they asked for my PASSWORD.
And being a NORMAL not completely stupid person, I did not enter it, AND even when their reg process tried to force me, I just stuck in an email company that they didn't 'have the keys to'.
So on two counts you can blame yourself, and your 'chums' can indeed be annoyed at you.
NEVER give the keys to your email to anyone, what the hell did you think they were going to do? AND they say what they are going to do.
You can only blame yourself for this blunder, and apologies in that manner.
I am sure you will delete / moderate this comment, but you shouldn't because it is the truth.
The fact that you email address is an image is REDUNDANT
Hello, imagine I am a spam bot. Why would a simple IMG tag foil me, when I am looking for mailto: tags?
Here comes the clue train... wooo wooo.
Try using a html encoded email address, it foils many spam bots, OR use an image, but LOOSE the mailto:
Now you will say it wasn't supposed to foil spam. I don't mean to get at you - but google lets me down - I was looking for an interesting discussion about WAYN, and you get a fairly high spot.
I guess kudos for at least bringing it to light in the way that you did! :-)
That is all
I agree I made a mistake. It's why I sent apologies and made this post.
A google search for "wayn" currently brings this page up in the first 10 results. I did the search wondering if anyone had anything bad to say about them before I registered.
Anyway, I just went through the registration process and to be fair to wayn.com the site does tell you exactly what it's going to do: "Simply import your contacts now to WAYN, and we will send an invite automatically to your friends for you!"
There's even a "skip this step" link, so you can happily register without "spamming" your friends.
So it seems a bit unfair to call them spammers!
Hi,
This last comment posted by "anonymous" is one of the most clever thing I could have read. Thanks god, they are some people with a brain out there. As to misterorange who initiated this post, you clearly have nothing else to do but slagging off websites that are actually genuine. As it has been mentioned of this blog, WAYN.com is actually warning all its users of the steps and what would happen. If you had taken the time to read, you would not be crying now. I have actually looked a lot into these things and there are many sites out there offering similar contact import mechanism. The thing about sites using your password and to then spam all your contacts is bullshit. All this is, is a mechanism enabling them to display all your contacts for you to then select which ones can receive an invitation. The problem is, most websites (like Hi5, Friendster) wont even bother mentioning what happens if you click on next or continue....WAYN is actually one of the only sites who really stand out and warn all its users. I am actually a member of WAYN myself and may I just say, WAYN.com is a truly amazing site.
Well done to its creators. they have done a fantastic job.
WAYN doesn't do it you do. The site asks you if you want to import your address books from Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail etc.
You have to choose to do that and then choose to invite those that are listed as not members of WAYN.
I know as I registered there a while back and went through the same thing. I didn't invite anyone though but did use the feature to add those who showed in the list as already having a WAYN account.
I fully agree that WAYN is scum. My experience mirrored yours exactly, and now, around six months later, it happened *again*--I hadn't been to the site since. While they do warn you, who would *ever* want to invite ever person they've ever emailed to the service? I think it's a deceitful tactic, and although it was my fault for giving them my contacts (I still can't believe I did that), it doesn't change the fact that they are scum.
I fully disagree - WAYN.com is actually a very geniuine website - all information is published and they tell you exactly what is going to happen - As far as I am concerned, this is a fantastic site!
I received an email on my Yahoo account. My email client showed my name as the sender. This would make someone think I sent od authorized the email to be sent to them when I did not. I just emailed WAYN asking them to remove all of my information.
Mark
My man. I'm with you on this one. I too made the mistake of signing up my Gmail account. I feel stupid now, but I'm not an idiot and was lulled into doing so by the website. Kudos to WAYN. They fooled me. I thought I was importing my contacts, and not aware that they (all 1500, including students and business associates) would get an email appearing to originate from myself. This is the key part. They sent an email from my account ... not an email from themselves to my conatcts authorized by me. I unsubscribed. Made no difference. They still host my info and send me emails. Amateur, unprofessional, whatever you want to call it. Those of us with direct professional knowldege of spamming feel (a) stupid for getting pulled in, and (b) that WAYN are a bunch of chancers. TMOFWIW.
where is that unregister button? i can't seem to find it...
hi my name is ellese and i was wondering how to delete my wayn account can you help me please
To unregister from WAYN, follow this link. It is in the "contact us" part of their site. You must be logged in to do this.
http://www.wayn.com/wayn.html?wci=unregister
Why dont we all put support@wayn.com as one of our contacts. That way, the next time the spam us, they spam themselves.
it seems weird that they want to know every trip you've ever taken in your life.... kind of like inadvertantly creating your own dossier for STASI (east german secret police) or the KGB...
Wee honestly I received this kind of mail as well. I wasn't happy but then I click on link and start to see what WAYN is. It's not such a crap mate, for me it's nice portal for travel buddies and I really like it. I am planning go to Norway soon and I found already a lot of nice people by WAYN...:)
Since this page is so high in Google for WAYN I thought I'd post this. Eveyone has a definition of SPAM. For me, the WAYN mailserver connecting to my Exchange Server and sending e-mail EVERY 20 seconds over a 5 day period counts as SPAM. The IP of their mailserver is 217.148.33.46. I've certainly blocked it. I don't need 40000! e-mails all asking me the same thing. Either they have a problem with their mailserver (that would be their fault) of they are, genuinly, spammers (that'd be there fault too). A Bad company, with bad practises.
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