
IDrive spammed my Gmail contacts  - ironkeith
http://aviary.com/bizblog/posts/idrive-spammed-my-gmail-contacts
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krschultz
Never ever give up your email password to a 3rd party you don't _really_
trust. My only exception is Mint.com so far, not even Facebook or LinkedIn.

~~~
TallGuyShort
That was my first thought - but to me it sounded more like they were contacts
already downloaded to his iPhone, or the contacts file you can download from
GMail for your own personal backup. I don't think he gave them his password -
unless I'm mistaken?

edit: in any case, your advice is still right on the money, and I'd have to
second it!

~~~
brown9-2
Sounds like iDrive spammed every contact on his iPhone, and because of the
fact/coincidence that he has gmail set to save every person you ever send an
email to as a contact, AND because of the way he is using gmail on his iPhone,
this became "iDrive spammed my gmail address book".

If a company is selling a service (iDrive) which is basically "store your
contact data on our services, trust us with this data", it's pretty shitty for
that company to then turn around and market to the contacts in that data. It's
probably in their TOS or something, but it still feels like an abuse of trust.

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mixmax
If they had proper customer service it might have been caught and dealt with.
Now instead it's on the frontpage of Hackernews.

~~~
potatolicious
I don't know if CS could have solved this - it's not as if the spam was a
mistake/glitch. "Proper" customer service would not have made the spamming any
more palatable.

~~~
byrneseyeview
"I'm very sorry about that. We'll give you a full refund, and our next version
will fix this."

Would he have written the same blog entry now? It's slightly fashionable to
call out good customer service -- perhaps the entry would be about how they
screwed up and completely redeemed themselves.

~~~
potatolicious
"I'm very sorry we conspired to use your private data to spam your friends.
Here's a full refund, and now that our pants have been caught around our
ankles, we will stop doing this."

Has a different ring to it. Good customer service will absolve accidental Bad
Things(tm), not malicious acts.

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jrockway
It sounds like Apple would be the right people to complain to. Just pull the
app from the App Store, then let IDrive appeal.

~~~
CalmQuiet
Apple gets bashed for being _too_ selective in approving apps.

Instances like this will raise the ante on the approval/rejection process.
Pretty tough to vet the ethics of the company behind the app as a part of it,
eh?

~~~
jrockway
I assume people want an iPhone because Apple restricts what you do with it.
This is a perfect time for Apple to do some restricting.

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icey
I got a few of these emails from IDrive yesterday (one pimping IDrive, and the
other pimping IDrive lite), and I was wondering what the hell was going on. At
least now I know they've earned their place in my spam folder.

