
Didn’t Homejoy Shut Down? - alokedesai
https://medium.com/@johnsalzarulo/didn-t-homejoy-shut-down-e8d7a2dfb485
======
aarontcheung
I'm one of the founders of Homejoy. I'm still very passionate about the home
service space. After leaving Homejoy, I started FlyMaids, where we're
exploring a few different angles on the space.

We recently acquired the customer and service provider data from Homejoy.

We're a small team that has been focused on moving quickly while bootstraping.
We tried to quickly test different approaches, but we realize now that we did
so in an unclear manner. We recognize the need to use the data we acquired
responsibily. As a result, we're taking the site down, and we're going to do a
better job with our testing moving forward.

~~~
aarontcheung
I wanted to follow up and address some concerns mentioned in this thread, and
acknowledge that I definitely made mistakes.

How did you get my information? We acquired Homejoy’s domain and customer
information through an ABC process. Our intention is to improve and then
relaunch Homejoy’s cleaning service. We were testing a new model using Fly
Maids, one of our testing brands. As evidenced today, we made some mistakes.

Why is your email and website so misleading? When we contacted customers, we
didn’t tell them we were Homejoy relaunching because we wanted to gauge
reception to our new model without the influence of Homejoy’s brand.

As a result, we scared many customers, who expected the worst had happened to
their data. We should have told customers upfront who we were, what we were
testing, and used original content.

Do you have my credit card info? No, as of Oct 28 2015, we deleted all credit
card info, including the last 4 digits. Also, the Homejoy Stripe account has
been permanently shut down so no one can get access to it in any manner.

At no point did we ever charge a Homejoy customer’s credit card.

How do I delete my account information to ensure that it is not used in any
way? Please go here
[http://goo.gl/forms/YPdJlYJ9Pn](http://goo.gl/forms/YPdJlYJ9Pn)

~~~
robhunter
ABC process - [http://bankruptcy.cooley.com/2008/03/articles/business-
bankr...](http://bankruptcy.cooley.com/2008/03/articles/business-bankruptcy-
issues/assignments-for-the-benefit-of-creditors-simple-as-abc/)

~~~
chris_wot
Oh! That's what that is... Thanks for the link Rob.

------
TaylorGood
Digging into trademarks, incorporations and S-1's is a weird little obsession
of mine..

That said, my initial findings are that Flymaids is directly related to
Homejoy. Under Privacy link of Flymaids it states "In the European Union, we
are Fly Maids Europe Limited, a company incorporated in England and Wales
(registration number 8883585) with its registered office address at 14
Whittonditch Road, Ramsbury, Marlborough, Wiltshire, United Kingdom, SN8 2PY."

If you lookup the registration number at Wales Companies House, it shows owner
as "HOMEJOY EUROPE LIMITED"

[https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/08883585](https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/08883585)

FWIW, they changed their registered address on 8/7/15, ten days short of their
announcing to cease operations: [http://bit.ly/1kbHtyJ](http://bit.ly/1kbHtyJ)

~~~
JoblessWonder
As I mentioned in another post, they don't seem to be actually registered in
Deleware and there are typos related to find/replace
(support@flymaids.com.com) so I'm not sure we can discount the chance someone
just cut/pasted that from the original Homejoy privacy page. Homejoy's privacy
page doesn't load and the wayback machine was blocked via robots.txt so we
have no good way of checking that I can think of.

Also, nice to meet someone else obsessed with investigating incorporation
documents. :)

~~~
TaylorGood
This may be known already, but HOMEJOY, INC. is a Delaware corporation with
the filing number: 4815336

\----

As mentioned in Flymaids privacy policy, their "head office" in Delaware is
actually offices to incorporate.com; a registered agent for out of state
companies.

Also, a DBA search in Delaware returns nothing:
[http://www.courts.delaware.gov/tradenames/JICKioskSearch.asp...](http://www.courts.delaware.gov/tradenames/JICKioskSearch.aspx)

~~~
chris_wot
Is there any way if getting the company status without having yo pay $10?
Seems bizarre you have to pay to see if the company is still in business or
not!

------
nostromo
Everyone is assuming that the founders sold the company data to Fly Maids, a
brand-new company nobody has ever heard of before.

It's also possible one of the founders just spun up the new service themselves
and copied over all of the customer records. If so, they may want to prepare
to be sued by their previous investors.

It's one thing to fail after giving it the good ol' college try, but it's
another entirely to strip the copper out of the walls on your way out.

Speculation aside, they should put out a statement to clarify the relationship
between the companies and what's going on with their customers' data.

~~~
JoblessWonder
Well, according to their Privacy Policy you can just shoot them an e-mail:

> You may contact us as follows: support@flymaids.com.com

Oh wait....

[Bonus points for saying they are incorporated in Delaware who has no record
of a business by that name.]

 __*Edit- See below, I searched the company name on the Delaware website two
different ways and they certainly do not have an active registration or even a
name reservation.

~~~
austenallred
Every startup is incorporated in Delaware, not always as the name they call
themselves.

~~~
JoblessWonder
Except they gave me the name to look up[1]:

"In the USA/rest of the world (excluding the European Union), we are Fly
Maids, Inc. (doing business as Fly Maids), a Delaware corporation with our
head office at 2711 Centerville Road, Suite 400, Wilmington, New Castle
County, Delaware 19808."

Trust me, it isn't there. I tried both the regular lookup and just a simple
name reservation in case the paperwork hadn't gone through yet. No results for
either.

[1] [http://www.flymaids.com/privacy](http://www.flymaids.com/privacy)

~~~
will_brown
Not incorporated in Delaware (as represented) nor are they qualified to do
business in CA (where they are, presumably, physically located)...Probably not
the company you want coordinating strangers into your home, though something
tells me this is par for the SV course. You know move fast and break things,
or beg forgiveness rather than ask permission. However, my advice
owners/operators, they might wish to consult a lawyer to explain the basics of
personal liability and benefits of corporate protections...

~~~
JoblessWonder
Oh yeah, totally forgot about the part that they were trying to do business in
Los Angeles...

------
thaumaturgy
What's the big deal? Homejoy is just hacking startup downfunding... (/s)

I'd like to see some kind of stronger YC influence on ethics in the companies
they fund. I realize that YC doesn't have any direct control over the
companies, but it could be as simple as including good ethics in the traits
they look for in startup founders.

A while back I started compiling a list of YC companies that spammed or
otherwise behaved badly. It quickly got back-burnered by other projects, but
there was AirBnB from W09, InstallMonetizer and SocialCam from W12, Zenefits
from W13, Abacus and GetAirHelp from W14, Gradberry and OmniRef from W15 ...
while so far it looks like the majority of YC startups are well-behaved, the
trend was looking like there's a few in every batch that are willing to do
shady things to meet their growth metrics.

Or, in Homejoy's case, maybe make a little more money while winding down.

~~~
gkoberger
YC makes it very clear they will disavow any company or founder that acts
unethically. YC is strict about very few things, but this was made clear in no
uncertain terms (especially by Jessica). When things go bad, YC always gets
involved – even if you don't read about it online.

Don't blame YC just yet. We don't know what happened here. Maybe Homejoy went
into debt, had their assets seized, and lost control (like with GigaOM). Maybe
the investors approved or forced a reincorporation under another name. Maybe
Handy bought the assets and is quickly trying to stem off churn. Or, yeah,
maybe something unethical happened. Until we know what happened, though, it's
all speculation.

~~~
thaumaturgy
Is this a new policy? Because the company that prompted me to start the list,
Zenefits, is still a Paul Graham darling:
[https://twitter.com/paulg/status/654377298234224640](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/654377298234224640)

Or, might be that our definitions of unethical don't match up 100%. I consider
spam to be unethical, maybe you just mean more serious offenses.

~~~
ericsidelis
I guess we all have different views on ethics, maybe I'm just used to seeing
spam and tossing it out. I find it harmless now because I'm so used to getting
it...but its interesting to see how offended people get when they see
unsolicited virtual mail which can be deleted with a click of a button.

I'm actually more concerned about the actual spam in my real world mailbox
that USPS dumps 3 times a week, no opt-out button there.

~~~
thaumaturgy
Among my responsibilities is systems administration for hosted services for
customers, including email. What is for you a minor nuisance is for me a major
time-consuming headache. For instance, even with a top-of-the-line modern mail
stack, including SpamAssassin and greylisting and so and so forth, enough spam
was still getting through to customer inboxes that I've had to develop
additional non-trivial software specifically for dealing with it.

I beat this drum occasionally because I don't want to have to pit my meager
resources against the resources of someone like YCombinator who are willing to
provide funding (and introductions to enormous amounts of even more funding)
to companies that are OK with spamming.

And I'm not including B2B cold emails as "spam", even if they're written as a
template, so long as there's an actual human behind them and they aren't being
sent out en masse (for example, Locbox:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4672162](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4672162)).

------
gondo
as someone mentioned in the blog comment, Fly Maids site is a complete copy
(with redesigned homepage) of another cleaning service
[http://www.homeaglow.com/](http://www.homeaglow.com/)

@johnsalzarulo out of curiosity, try if your login works on homeaglow.com

f.e.: both logos are served from the same S3 bucket:
[https://s3q1w2e3.s3.amazonaws.com/brands/logos/fly_maids.png](https://s3q1w2e3.s3.amazonaws.com/brands/logos/fly_maids.png)
[https://s3q1w2e3.s3.amazonaws.com/brands/logos/homeaglow.png](https://s3q1w2e3.s3.amazonaws.com/brands/logos/homeaglow.png)

~~~
johnsalzarulo
When I entered my email into homeaglow it didn't work. It said I had the wrong
password. BUT when I entered in the password reset box I got a password reset
email from support@flymaids.com. They are unmistakably connected somehow.

~~~
stevesearer
Perhaps homeaglow is just a prelaunch version of flymaids? Line maybe they
were creating the brand around homeaglow, then switched at some point to
flymaids and just never wound down the first site?

------
FussyZeus
Oh that's not shady at all. Assuming all this is legal (I doubt it, but
hypothetically) how is this a good marketing tactic? Having all this info
already stored comes off as way more creepy than convenient as evidenced by
the author of the article. And yeah, I can't see this being legal in a
thousand years.

~~~
pavel_lishin
> _Having all this info already stored comes off as way more creepy than
> convenient as evidenced by the author of the article._

If you're used to thinking about this from our side of things, sure. For
Random Person, they might think, "gee, this is neat! And they've already got
my card number and everything!"

~~~
chris_wot
No, random person thinks what we all think: "how the hell did they get my
credit card details?!?!"

------
throwaway13337
From what I gather from the other comments, it looks like most likely
Homejoy's liquidator (Nortonsgroup) has sold Homejoy's user data to Homeaglow.

Homeaglow copied and rebranded their own tech as Fly Maids to service this
user list.

~~~
nacs
> has sold Homejoy's user data to Homeaglow

Sold it with credit card numbers attached though?

That sounds awfully.. illegal even for a liquidation.

~~~
yeukhon
See [http://www.pcworld.com/article/2901028/radioshack-puts-
custo...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/2901028/radioshack-puts-customers-
personal-data-up-for-sale-in-bankruptcy-auction.html)

Interestingly it has been legal in one case.

~~~
nacs
Not really, FTC didn't like it:

[http://money.cnn.com/2015/05/19/news/companies/radioshack-
cu...](http://money.cnn.com/2015/05/19/news/companies/radioshack-customer-
data/)

------
rathboma
You might want to obfuscate the last 4 digits of your credit card in that
screenshot given how useful it is for hacking other systems.

~~~
johnsalzarulo
Card's already canceled. Thanks though.

~~~
lemevi
Doesn't matter, it's still confidential information that can be used to verify
you or used to social engineer more information about you. "Hi sir, I'm
calling in because I lost access to my account, I don't have my current card,
but I do have the last 4 of my previous that I used on this service, will that
be good enough?"

Like don't reveal unnecessary information if you don't have to. It's low
effort, high risk.

~~~
vladd
You should read: [http://www.wired.com/2012/08/apple-amazon-mat-honan-
hacking/](http://www.wired.com/2012/08/apple-amazon-mat-honan-hacking/)

>> It turns out, a billing address and the last four digits of a credit card
number are the only two pieces of information anyone needs to get into your
iCloud account. Once supplied, Apple will issue a temporary password, and that
password grants access to iCloud. <<

[Apple may have changed their policy meanwhile, but likely others did not]

------
swang
Biggest thing is that CC info still being on there. That is grossly
irresponsible.

Not that I approve ripping people off, but hard to sympathize with Handy when
Handy treats (treated?) its employees and workers poorly.

As for the whole transferring over of assets without any secure certs, that's
pretty shady and/or lazy not doing that.

Cue someone from said company posting, "oh sorry we're not ready for public
and that accidentally got sent" without mentioning why they even have the
author's data or why the author's credit card data was apparently sold off.

------
enraged_camel
I'm pretty sure I know what's going on. In order to pay off their debts,
Homejoy must have sold user account information, including credit cards, to a
bunch of local home cleaning businesses. A shit ton of them have been popping
around over the past couple of years, modeled after the advice given in this
subreddit:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/entrepreneurridealong](https://www.reddit.com/r/entrepreneurridealong)

The difference with these local cleaning businesses is that they are developed
and ran by amateurs, who often times copy each other (or the successful
giants) down to the wording on the websites, with minor branding changes. They
tend to be super low-budget, so Fly Maids probably paid some "web developer"
$500 to develop their website and paid zero attention to security, PCI
compliance, and so on. They then purchased a bunch of LA-based user accounts
from the now-defunct Homejoy, who of course did not perform any due diligence.

Shitty situation to be sure. I definitely lost respect for the Homejoy
founders, and will probably stay away from their next venture.

~~~
djur
How is it possibly legal to sell credit card details to a third party?

~~~
geofft
It makes sense in many cases: when, say, Verizon Wireless acquired Alltel, an
Alltel customer who has automatic monthly billing set up shouldn't be required
to re-set up billing with Verizon, simply because it's a new company.

It's not clear to me that the same intuition applies if the Alltel equivalent
is shutting down because it was mismanaged, and the Verizon equivalent was
created by one of the mismanagers and has no other assets, but it's hard for
me to imagine there's a meaningful legal distinction.

------
marrone12
Looking like they sold their customer data over to fly maids or whoever was
behind them. Surprised they were able to actually transfer the CC info. When I
was at a company that was selling off assets, the most we could do was give
them customer email addresses. I have serious doubts about the legality of
this.

~~~
mikegirouard
This appears to be very plausible.

Googling "Fly Maids, Inc" shows their terms and privacy pages w/last modified
dates of 2013 and 2014 respectively.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Fly+Maids,+Inc%22](https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Fly+Maids,+Inc%22)

~~~
JoblessWonder
Except it looks like the domain was dropped on 1/17/2014 and then re-
registered earlier this month.

The domain's WHOIS info lists:

Creation Date: 2015-10-08T04:34:58Z

------
aioprisan
This is completely appalling and a blatant ripoff of Handy. I hope they don't
get away with this.

~~~
cballard
Handy is a horrid, racist company. Don't feel sorry for them.

[http://thebillfold.com/2014/10/my-day-interviewing-for-
the-s...](http://thebillfold.com/2014/10/my-day-interviewing-for-the-service-
economy-startup-from-hell/)

~~~
ryanSrich
I was searching for that article so I could post it here. Handy is a
horrendous company.

------
S_A_P
Wow. Just wow. This is egregious. I would be incensed. I'm a 39 year old
consultant that makes money from technology but I am starting to feel like I'm
out of touch and old. This is not ok. If you fail, fail with class and
dignity.

------
farmdawgnation
This site appears to be hosted on Heroku according to the DNS information.

    
    
        www.flymaids.com.	3600	IN	CNAME	cleanerconnect.herokuapp.com.
        cleanerconnect.herokuapp.com. 300 IN	CNAME	us-east-1-a.route.herokuapp.com.
        us-east-1-a.route.herokuapp.com. 60 IN	A	23.21.224.165
    

Would the author have a case for emailing Heroku's abuse address and asking
them to look into it or would this fall outside their purview? My hypothesis
is that they'd want to know if their services were being used in a fashion
that was creepy (for lack of a better descriptor).

~~~
myth_buster

      Updated Date: 27-oct-2015
      Creation Date: 08-oct-2015
    

They be baffled by the page views they be getting! Would this be considered as
"any publicity is good publicity"?

------
martin_
They may still be compliant and storing your credit card responsibly, I would
assume they used Stripe or similar and they're only sending the last 4 digits
back over standard http. If they're allowing you to add a new card, then
there's an issue.

~~~
nathancahill
Yep, exactly right.

------
adamhardin
What is the full URL of the link in the email you received? You must save your
login information in your browser, otherwise I assume you would have
questioned how you logged into the site at all.

It could be a phishing scheme that attacked your saved login information then
placed that on a dummy site in hopes that you may provide even more data.

EDIT: They could have sold / transferred user data... but I don't know how
they would automatically authenticate you without using some previously stored
data that you, maybe unknowingly, gave them access to.

------
goomp
One of the comments on the article itself mentioned css being served seemingly
from www.homeaglow.com, which was weird to me. So I did some investigating.
Looking at the DNS of both flymaids.com and homeaglow.com, they both point to
separate IPs (184.168.221.1 and 184.168.221.13 respectively), but have an
additional CNAME to
[http://cleanerconnect.herokuapp.com](http://cleanerconnect.herokuapp.com).

Looking at the error on the heroku page directly, and comparing everything
from the license info, help console, website copy, it seems that they are all
the same company, operating under different brandings.

The privacy agreements are what really get me though. Looks like they are
identical, except the brand names:

[http://www.homeaglow.com/privacy](http://www.homeaglow.com/privacy)

[http://www.flymaids.com/privacy](http://www.flymaids.com/privacy)

And if you go to
[http://cleanerconnect.herokuapp.com](http://cleanerconnect.herokuapp.com) and
inspect the broken icon, you get
"[https://s3q1w2e3.s3.amazonaws.com/brands/logos/"](https://s3q1w2e3.s3.amazonaws.com/brands/logos/").
Looking at the two sites' logos gets you the same URL, with an actual
filename:

[https://s3q1w2e3.s3.amazonaws.com/brands/logos/fly_maids.png](https://s3q1w2e3.s3.amazonaws.com/brands/logos/fly_maids.png)

[https://s3q1w2e3.s3.amazonaws.com/brands/logos/homeaglow.png](https://s3q1w2e3.s3.amazonaws.com/brands/logos/homeaglow.png)

And the two domains/common backend makes sense, if it is really just a CNAME
you could detect what URL the user hits and plug in a few variables. The
different IP addresses on the A record are what confuse me, but I don't know
much about DNS configuration.

But yes, it seems that flymaids and homeaglow are the same company. And I
don't think it's a stretch that homejoy was among those as well.

------
volaski
I'm surprised that BusinessInsider still doesn't have an article about this.
Shame on you Business Insider! It's already been an hour! I expect a headline
"How Homejoy came back from grave to haunt us"

~~~
ikeboy
[http://www.businessinsider.com/aaron-cheung-brings-
homejoy-c...](http://www.businessinsider.com/aaron-cheung-brings-homejoy-
customers-to-fly-maids-2015-10)

~~~
volaski
"Homejoy, the dead cleaning startup that shuttered its doors in August, has
apparently awoken from the grave to email its customers about a new partner"
==> I was so close!

~~~
psykovsky
IHNception?

------
yarou
Whomever is responsible for this should be blacklisted from receiving funding
in the future.

This is a really scummy move, and the person behind it should be publicly
humiliated so that they understand the error of their ways.

------
ericsidelis
The fact that I can still log in is scaring me, I never signed up for this and
nor did I even get an email. My credit card details which are valid are still
present.

I find it hard to believe this information was sold and if it was, were they
storing credit card info in plain string format. Wouldn't each of those
businesses need an encryption key to decrypt secure card numbers. Wonder if
they sold that too. Either way props to John for posting this on Medium and of
course Aloke on HN.

~~~
grossvogel
Third party processors will store the card info securely and then provide only
parts of it back to you via an API call. Stripe's API includes the last 4 and
expiration date, as you can see here[1], so Fly Maids may not have all of that
data.

[1] [https://stripe.com/docs/api#cards](https://stripe.com/docs/api#cards)

------
JoblessWonder
The business number referenced on the privacy page is registered to "HOMEJOY
EUROPE LIMITED"

[https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/08883585](https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/08883585)

------
mikegirouard
I tried to book an appointment with a bogus email and got a 500.

The logo image was broken and I noticed an interesting path when viewing it's
`src` attribute:

    
    
        https://s3q1w2e3.s3.amazonaws.com/brands/logos/
    

I wonder if this is a template theme or perhaps some sort of parent company
that has many brands.

------
livejamie
My old Homejoy login doesn't work on that site, and doing "forgot your
password" gives an error of "user does not exist" for the email I used with
Homejoy.

~~~
kornish
They're probably not porting over accounts by default, but rather waiting for
users to express interest by clicking the link in the marketing email.

From the original post:

> Worst still, as I navigated around the site I realized the email link I
> clicked logged me into “My Account”. This screen had lots of my personal
> information, home address, email, even my credit card number.

~~~
chris_wot
So hold on... If we can work out how they encoded those activation URLs, or
someone intercepts the email then they can get full access to anyone's
account?

I have zero sympathy for HomeJoy. They failed, which is something I can gave
sympathy for. But they sold all their customer's private data without
notifying them of this fact, and caused major security concerns in the
process!

~~~
pavel_lishin
We don't actually know what happened here. It could have been just one founder
doing something shady; it could have been a hack; it could be something we
can't imagine yet.

Let's not break out the pitchforks until we know who to point them at.

~~~
chris_wot
Actually, I'm breaking out the pitchforks. One of the requirements for PCI
compliance is that you do NOT hold credit card data for any longer than
absolutely required. Given HomeJoy was not doing any more billing of credit
cards, these should have been removed from their system.

------
johnsalzarulo
So, it looks like there is 3 distinct yet related sites that we have been able
to dig up.

[http://www.flymaids.com/](http://www.flymaids.com/)
[http://cleanr.ca/](http://cleanr.ca/)
[http://www.homeaglow.com/](http://www.homeaglow.com/)

My hunch is that there is more. They all seem to share a lot in common.

Credit for digging these up: [https://medium.com/@bradbatt/their-css-
references-brands-hom...](https://medium.com/@bradbatt/their-css-references-
brands-homeaglow-css-styles-css-a411975a2423#.cpqo73c3e)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=phonon](https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=phonon)

------
narsil
Their robots.txt [1] prevented archive.org's Wayback machine from crawling
their Privacy Policy at
[https://www.homejoy.com/privacy](https://www.homejoy.com/privacy)

I would have assumed that I'd be notified if sensitive information on Homejoy
was sold to a third-party or "partner", but I should have probably read their
privacy policy more closely when the shutdown notice came out.

[1]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20151023153644/https://homejoy.c...](https://web.archive.org/web/20151023153644/https://homejoy.com/robots.txt)

------
daveloyall
I read this whole page of comments (when it was at 105) and gk1's comment is
the only one that comes even close to what I'd like to see here:

> You're underestimating how far people are willing to go to appear legit.
> Showing logos of companies who aren't your clients -- or of publications
> that never mentioned you -- is common. They know most people won't check to
> verify.

...Along those lines: has anybody considered the possibility that the whole
thing is an elaborate phishing site?

Here's an avenue for investigation which seems to be unexplored here: has
Flymaids hired any maids, or contracted with them, or however that works?

------
xmly
Very low, very low. Do not understand how investors chose these founders.

~~~
ajeet_dhaliwal
I am actually finding this intriguing and genuinely curious to know what is
going on. One of the cofounders was a panelist at an event just one month
before they announced their closure speaking about their growth and it didn't
seem like anything was wrong (its on YouTube) so im curious to know what's up.

------
siegecraft
Just playing the VC shell game? Let's just write off the debt of this failed
company and flip it into a rebrand of the same service?

------
ghayes
Honest question, how is this #11 right now with 901 points? It's below a story
with 199 points that was posted an hour before.

~~~
jarek
It must have been heavily flagged. It's been lower than it should have been
from the start. Admittedly the title of the submission isn't great so - if I'm
being charitable - it's because users flagged based on title only.

~~~
chris_wot
It's been on the front page for hours now.

~~~
jarek
Yes. Right now this submission is 15 hours old, in position 25 with 1065
points and 313 comments. In position 24 is a submission from 15 hours ago with
131 points and 22 comments
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10466678](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10466678)).
In position 19 is a submission from 14 hours ago with 153 points and 70
comments
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10467190](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10467190)).
So it's not just because of exponential submission decay nor because of
flamewar filtering.

Last evening GMT this submission was in fourth place when by
points/comments/age it should have been first.

User flagging is the most charitable interpretation.

edit: now at position 54, 1078 points, 315 comments, 16 hours ago. At position
53 is a story from 17 hours ago, 69 points, 13 comments
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10466419](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10466419))

------
nichochar
Always had lot's of bad feelings and vibes with these founders

------
Judson
Judging by the Olark (site chat) account being used, Flymaids.com is run by
Homeaglow.com.

Edit: Which is also the same account used on cleanerconnect.com.

------
eCa
Apart from everything else in the OP; from the email he received:

> I wanted to reach out personally [...]

So personally is going the way of literally, which literally does or does not
mean _literally_ [1].

[1]
[http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/literally](http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/literally)

------
cornellwright
Looks like the domain was registered on Oct 8th and I can't find "Fly Maids"
or similar names on the Delaware Division of Corporations. (Maybe it takes
longer for it to show up?)

Either way super weird and creepy.

~~~
jball037
Any C-corp created in Delaware shows up their Entity Search (link below)
almost instantly, e.g. within a few minutes of the company's creation.

That said, I looked on the Fly Maids webpage and they don't give the name of
their corporation at all, they just show "© 2015 Fly Maids. All rights
reserved." That means that "Fly Maids" could be a trademark, a fictitious
name, owned by a corporation with a different name, or just owned by any
random individual who hasn't registered his/her business. Another possibility
is that Fly Maids is in fact registered as a corporation or LLC, but in a
state other than Delaware. Yet another possibility is that "Fly Maids" is a
fictitious name, and those are generally registered at the county in which
they operate, and searching through each county's database would be an
enormous task.

My point is: in any of the above cases it could be nearly impossible to figure
out who is actually running this website. And failing to find a result in the
Delaware Division of Corporations website really doesn't tell you much of
anything.

And, as a relevant tangent: If you are _really_ interested in finding out who
owns/runs that website you could always sue Fly Maids. GoDaddy explicitly
states in their Ts and Cs that they will give up owner information if there is
a lawsuit brought against the owner...

\----- Delaware Division of Corporations Entity Search link...
[https://icis.corp.delaware.gov/Ecorp/EntitySearch/NameSearch...](https://icis.corp.delaware.gov/Ecorp/EntitySearch/NameSearch.aspx)

~~~
JoblessWonder
As mentioned above, they don't exist or are lying. Likely the former. Their
privacy page claims to give you exactly what to search for:

> In the USA/rest of the world (excluding the European Union), we are Fly
> Maids, Inc. (doing business as Fly Maids), a Delaware corporation with our
> head office at 2711 Centerville Road, Suite 400, Wilmington, New Castle
> County, Delaware 19808.

[http://www.flymaids.com/privacy](http://www.flymaids.com/privacy)

------
tomahunt
Looks like some big mistakes might have been made by the people over at
FlyMaids. Despite all this I hope there are people close who are looking out
for their wellbeing, and helping them fix the situation.

------
nodesocket
Strange, I had an account with Homejoy, yet I just tried to log into Fly Maids
and it failed with no account. Furthermore, I tried using forgot password, and
it leaked that no account exists with my e-mail.

------
rjf90
Am I the only one that doesn't see any archive on
[https://archive.org/web/](https://archive.org/web/)?

------
pavornyoh
Yeah, it looks the same with little tweaks. My question is did those magazines
feature flymaids as they are stating?

EDIT: The site looks the same and that is a clear fraud hence my question.

~~~
kajecounterhack
According to the article, no.

~~~
pavornyoh
That's a bit brazen to make those claims on the site. They can get into
trouble for that and also ruin their own reputation. So I am thinking the site
is a little joke? When you click on help and go to FAQs, it labels questions
as "HOT".

I think it is a joke.

~~~
revelation
Did you notice they literally copied their competitors site?

Testimonials are the least of their worries.

~~~
jpatel3
User of private data is really concerning. How easy someone can take liberty
of using the private data for a ride :( When I read the post about someone go
crazy to protect their data and communication, I feel they need to have little
faith in fellow people. But this kind of instance move my confidence and make
me think that we are racing against time and we will see more and more kind of
this situations.

------
aws_ls
Really surprised to see this story, get so many votes. Yes, this guy did not
act very properly, and seems like its a desperate act to salvage an old
business. Admittedly the copying of UI CSS from a competitor was a clear
wrong, but all the others passing on data, kind of like a grey area, Ok its
wrong if I have to choose one option. But what the heck, cut him some slack,
he has posted immediately with his real name. What do you want, shame him into
killing himself? The insensitivity is simply shocking to me. You have acted as
a lynch mob today (hiding behind the technicalities), I am sorry to say that.

------
Animats
Current contents of "flymaids.com" is a 404 page:

Heroku | No such app

There is no app configured at that hostname. Perhaps the app owner has renamed
it, or you mistyped the URL.

Hosting appears to be by GoDaddy.

------
Ch_livecodingtv
This article here says. It was customer retention problem.
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenhuet/2015/07/23/what-
really...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenhuet/2015/07/23/what-really-
killed-homejoy-it-couldnt-hold-onto-its-customers/)

------
johnsalzarulo
Did anyone else in the LA area use Homejoy, or did anyone else get this email?

------
sharemywin
I wish people wouldn't jump to conclusions with out all the facts. We don't
know who bought what. Google has some of the team. Handy was in talks to by
homejoy. who knows who else is involved. if handy bought the data they would
have a right to their own copy.

------
jondubois
Silicon valley encourages this behaviour though. It seems we've forgotten that
hacking is a just a euphemism for cheating.

------
crabasa
I think it goes without saying that there is nothing remotely legitimate
happening here. The fact that Aaron posted this comment and expected anybody
to believe it is remarkable.

That being said, I spent 5 minutes researching Aaron Cheung and I was
astonished by what I found. He has a Twitter account, but has posted exactly 0
times [1]. He has an HN account, but has posted exactly 0 times [2], and only
commented twice (including today). He graduated from MIT in 2009 and this has
seemingly been the only real job he's had for the past 5 years [3].

I think, from this perspective, I understand why Aaron is doing what he's
doing. It doesn't make it right, not even close, but this person has lived and
breathed the home cleaning space for his entire professional career. He may
not have the slightest idea what else he could possibly do instead.

    
    
        [1]: https://twitter.com/aarontcheung
        [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=aarontcheung
        [3]: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aarontcheung
    

Edit: I'm certainly not claiming that people who are inactive on social media
are bad people. But given the complete picture of what has been reported in
the media, what was revealed today and the tone-deafness of his comment, I
_personally_ think this lack of engagement is part of the explanation.

~~~
colinbartlett
I don't think it's fair to judge people based on a lack of social media
presence. Plenty of successful, competent, qualified people don't tweet.

~~~
91bananas
Just, thank you.

------
untilHellbanned
Heard it here first: This is the start of YC's fall.

~~~
usernames_suck
Let's not go overboard. Hopefully, they learn from this an stop letting in
"useless" Facebook for X startups. Or at least have a more rigorous interview
process.

------
thejerz
While this is sleezy, and probably violating all sorts of copyright and fraud
statutes, I have to commend the down-and-dirty hustle here.

~~~
johnsalzarulo
Hustle is one thing to call it I guess. ha ha.

