Bebo is Too Sketchy
UPDATE 11/8/06: Since writing this over a year ago, this post has become very popular. In fact, it's the number one reason people Googling find this site. Since I wrote this post, Bebo has changed into a MySpace competitor, not the spam factory disguised as an online address book it once was. I've turned off comments on this post simply because it's not all that relevant anymore.
I've been receiving a lot of emails lately for a service called Bebo. It's an online address book where members can update their contact information, thus updating the address books of anyone else who is involved. Thus, many friends are emailing me to sign up and include myself in their address book.
I looked at their Privacy Policy and their Terms of Use, and though I did sign up, I've since cancelled my membership. The more I think about it, the more it just seems too dicey.
It's not that I don't think Bebo is legitimate; maybe it is. However, Bebo can quickly become a huge pyramid that then becomes a terribly potent petri dish for viruses and spyware.
Here's the part of the privacy policy that is just too ridden with holes for me:
We may use third parties that we refer to as internal service providers to facilitate or outsource one or more aspects of the business, product and service operations that we provide to you (e.g., search technology, email support) and therefore we may provide some of your personal information directly to these internal service providers. These internal service providers' are subject to confidentiality agreements with us and other legal restrictions that prohibit their use of the information we provide them for any other purpose except to facilitate the specific outsourced Bebo related operation, unless you have explicitly agreed or given your prior permission to them for additional uses.And we all know how trustworthy "confidentiality agreements" can be.
And, of course, this blanket statement:
Bebo reserves the right at any time to modify or discontinue, temporarily or permanently, the Service (or any part thereof) with or without notice. You agree that Bebo shall not be liable to you or any third party for any modification to or discontinuance of the Service.Dear Bebo user, We have changed our service. Please click here to read our new Terms of Use, to which you must agree.
You click, you scroll through a shitload of obfuscated legalese, and you accept the new terms, which now says everyone in your address book will now be added to several mailing lists.
Finally, Bebo has no advertising on the site. How are they making money?
Do the Internet a favor and avoid these sorts of viral internet pyramids. They're nothing but trouble.
26 Comments:
Hmm. You’re skepticism is convincing and reasonable. However, virtually every service agreement available comes equipped with a substantial and impenetrable mountain of legal caveats. These caveats, as a rule, exist for no other purpose than to protect the provider. For Bebo to flourish, it must overcome such skepticism as you exhibit – a tall order. Spreading viruses and spam would be extremely counterproductive if Bebo wishes to establish a serious presence online. Of course, that won’t stop it from acting foolishly; but if they’re providing a valuable service (and one that other sites have yet to seriously colonize), it may be worth it to give them the benefit of the doubt. After all, every transaction in every society is based on a fundamental trust that the provider of goods/services will make good on their debts. Furthermore, that the service is free is not as unusual as you make is out to be. Many online companies provide free service, including free online storage, email, etc. The marketing plan might very well include future paid or subscriber-based options. Many people were (and still are) seriously anxious about Gmail – fearing a lack of privacy and targeted marketing campaigns. While such malevolencies may yet be in the works, they have yet to materialize. Meanwhile, I’m finding that Gmail is a far superior internet-based email than any I have used thus far. I took a chance and am reaping great benefits. Skepticism tempered with a willingness to indulge new ideas keeps the engine of progress running.
Briefly, I coincur wholeheartedly with Arlo, but more or less fot the following reason: I feel up to my armpits with fucking crap from the internet I do not want.
There, I said it.
And I recognize I am the first person EVER to get annoyed with spam.
We crossed a new threshold however, when my friends and aquaintences become a part of the circle and ask me (however politely) to acquiesce (did I spell that right...sweet). I want to insulate myself as much as possible from the unwanted marketeers of cyberspace. As naive a concept as that may be, I do feel like I can commit some small actions in the name of damage control (and yes,this on par with an overly obese individual ordering a diet coke with there super-sized filet-o-fish value meal).
In the end, my biggest concern involves not the service, or its provider, but my fucking internet-junkie friends who don't realize some people still don't want the entirety of the internet population to know I am here, much less have my PERSONAL INFORMATION. I mean, if I won't give the hot chick behind the counter at Border's my email address, noone gonna get it.
Eric
P.S.
I think I should have capitalized part or all of the phrase filet-o-fish. Or not. Time will tell.
Cripes. It's an address. That's it. Nobody is trying to hijack your credit card, your bank account, or the porn under your mattress. Hell, if someone pays some government agency $50 they can get the address of every house I've ever lived in for the last 20 years; plus the last 6 digits of my social security number. (I'll leave my criminal record out of this). Plus, haven't y'all heard of spam-blockers? Security features? Email filters? Jaysus. It's your friends and aquaintences that would make use of a service to help find you and/or stay up-to-date with your whereabouts. Ah, nevermind.
Yeah well I'm with the original poster on this one. I smell fish.
As for it "just being an address" - that's laughable. You obviously don't have long standing business contacts who know a specific address and treat it as they would your mobile number. Once you have been running for several years with a main address it IS genuinely hard to take a kit on it and start again. You never know who or what that one person you didn't tell the new address is and what they might bring you. (...In business OR firendship).
John
There is advertising on Bebo (for example spot the odd one out iq tests) so there's no reason for them to do dodgy data selling to make money.
Its a funny thing. I've never given out my email address to any third party. Now some idiot has added me to their contacts at Bebo and now I'm getting about 2 or 3 a day.
This annoys me. Especially considering the great lengths I've gone to in order to get rid of junk; separate mail boxes and aliases for different types of mail.
I am currently setting up some mail forwarding rules that will forward all my junk to the people who added me to their Bebo accounts. Its only fair that as they signed me up, its their spam.
I have to agree with wintersnight. I too have gone to great lenghts to ensure that my email address is not spread around inundating me with crap. I'm now learning that if you don't want an email published, simply don't use it (which kind of takes away from the point of having an email address). How was I to know that an "hey, we should hook up for lunch some time, here's my work email address" would turn into this Bebo thing. Now I know.
I like this part
How will I be notified of changes?We may amend this Privacy Policy at any time by posting the amended terms on the Site. All amended terms shall automatically be effective immediately after posting on the Site. We will notify you in accordance with your Notification Preferences.So, if you turn off notifications, because they are blasting you with unrelated crap, then they chnage the srvice policy, and don't notify you because you told them not to. great.
This one is good, too . . .
Acquisition.
It is possible that as we continue to develop our website and our business, Bebo's service and/or related assets might be acquired. Notwithstanding any provision in this policy to the contrary, in event of a merger or acquisition, your personal information may be transferred to the acquiring entity, and become subject to the acquirer's data practices.So Company A buys Bebo, then your info is the property of Company A, who's privacy policy is vastly different than Bebo's. Then your info is up for sale, and the spam floods in . . .And the previous owners of Bebo make off like bandits. sounds like a good scam to me. Maybe I'll start one up.
Sorry if I sound sceptical, but I don't realy trust these "free services"
For me the link between Bebo and increased spam is obvious. All I have to do is look at my Outlook "Junk Mail" folder.
Before I received any Bebo mails: about one spam a month.
After I received a whole bunch of Bebo mails: one spam a day.
For heaven's sake, the email is even exactly the same each time: "CONGRATULATIONS - your email won the lottery"; sometimes differently worded, but all on the theme of lottery winnings.
Either these people REALLY want me to claim my $1,000,000 prize that's just sitting there in a gilt-trimmed envelope with my name on it... or they just got to me via Bebo's address harvesting.
Incidentally, a friend of mine who recently handed over her Hotmail password to Bebo had the Hotmail account hijacked today. She never had any problems whatsoever in all the years the account's been active. The only person she gave her password to the whole time was none other than good old Bebo.
I don't really have any issues with the privacy agreement.
Although I do have an issue with the websites security. They boldly use http for everything, thus broadcasting your password and addresses. I think this is a serious issue and have notified bebo.com of my concerns.
and password?
well i receive an register mail too from foreign friend, and i ve got a question why asking gmail password??
There have been reports that invitations to join Bebo have been received from people not sending them. This explains something for me: I have received many invitations, apparently from many people, some of whom I don't know, all exactly the same and in plain text. When I click the links to be added to their address books, it gives me the message, "your address books will be linked once the other party confirms that he/she knows you." When I try to find the function to invite others from the website, it says it won't send the e-mails for me and instead I have to copy and paste, which is inconsistent with all the invitations that I recieved "from" other people being all the same.
Having said which, I totally agree with kelly's second post. I would rather give out my e-mail address freely and use Mailwasher and Thunderbird to seperate spam and ham. I will continue using Bebo now that I have read this page and http://www.spudart.org/blogs/randomthoughts_comments/2816_0_3_0_C/ but I won't invite any more people without warning them. I would recommend that you all download and use Firefox and advise your friends to do the same, if you want to seperate yourselves from spying robots on the internet.
Those who think a spam filter is the answer to stopping all the junk mail are greatly lacking in understanding of the internet. The spam is clogging up and slowing down everyones email system. Just because you filter it at the end doesn't mean it hasn't already made the trip there to cause server errors for everyone on you ISP. It's like saying there's nothing wrong with packing your snail mail box to overflowing with junk mail because you can just throw the junk away. What about the legitimate mail that falls out on to the street to be walked over.
No, its only just "an address" to little kids who use it pass rumours to their friends.
I operate an ISP an watch people lose important email everyday because these low-life data harvesters.
I agree with the op. I thought bebo was ok (I hadn't actually read the terms), but this morning I opened it up and some joker had destroyed my profile with profanities, delete all my photo's etc. So i just wrote up a comment saying 'bla bla someone hacked my account thats why its empty', 5 minutes later, the hacker says something along the lines of thanks for the personal info and the credit card info. I was stunned! still am. My bebo account is locked now, but I changed all my email passwords, and I'm pretty sure he didnt get access to my credit cards, but how on earth did he get into my account!! I think it may have something to do with a gmail notifier program I was running.
At the end of the day you should never give anyone your password to another site. Bebo have a cheek to even ask.
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This post has been removed by a blog administrator.
RE: BEBO SHOULD STOP ASKING FOR PERSONAL E-MAIL PASSWORDS!!!!
I have been at BEBO for one year. My site is private. It has been a very useful as well as enjoyable experience for me. I have posted around 1000 photos for 50 of my family and friends to look through at their leisure.
There is one thing that bothers me a lot about BEBO though. I initiated questions about BEBO asking for passwords and it turned into a bit of a skirmish during the past week right in the blogs that are administered by BEBO staff.
I complained loudly and convincingly about the BEBO practice of offering newcomers the "service" of checking personal mail accounts at Yahoo, Hotmail or G-mail to see who has already joined BEBO. All kinds of people catch themselves handing over their passwords and regretting it later. Sure they can go in and change the passwords, and they do, but that was not the point of my efforts this past week.
I wanted to see if they would back off. My boss and I launched a reasonable offensive.
Not surprisingly, we were unsuccessful.
Here is the response that was posted by one of the 18 yr. old volunteer moderators at the public BEBO blog.
"I have it on the word of Bebo themselves that no record of passwords are kept however, they realise that that part of the service may be disconserting to some and will change that page to make it clear that it's not compulsary and they promise not to save any passwords."
I checked out those blogs at the bottom of the sign- in page. They are riddled with BEBO people (members)talking about silly things and comments about how "I love BEBO". when the comments about the passwords were posted, it was as if these people were traitors.
Something is not right.
To me it seems like a very cheap, personal, labourless survey carried out by a marketing company. For older wiser people the site can be interesting and fun but for vulnerable children without the sense to omit their personal details such as phone numbers and addresses and to post pictures of themselves on the net you can bet what kind of people are going to take advantage of such information and this is a very serious matter. BEBO may not be able to take responsibility for such people but it certainly will become a problem and it won’t be long before the service is shut down or at very least modified.
Your worrying over nothing to be honest. Im a member of Bebo and they have no information on me.
I did not give an address, telephone number etc..
All they have is an email address and if I was really that bothered I could have just set up an address just to confirm I signed up.
I also did not have to email any friends to invite them, it is easy to avoid that, all I did is find existing members that I know and join them.
So they have nothing on me and I didn't hassle any non members that I know.
The benifit that I have noticed is that I've got taking to people I havn't seen in years and I can get pics off their pages of holidays I went on with them in the past.
People seem to be too skeptical about everything these days, yes they probably sell information but you don't have to give that info in the first place.
"a friend of mine who recently handed over her Hotmail password to Bebo had the Hotmail account hijacked today."
She didn't have to hand over her password in the first place. It is easy to set up an account without giving away email passwords.
"thanks for the personal info and the credit card info"
Thats either pure lies or you deserved what you got, why would anyone in their right mind post their credit card info on a site like this. They don't ask for it so I find this very hard to believe.
if u use bebo you can see that on the messaging page there is space reserved for advertising purposes
I cant use bebo in my college because its been blocked
ya lets get it cruk'n snap ur bidles li'l jone in da house i love bebo for having me the air one night and im realted to Halley Evermon and she gave me her passwored and username ya ok
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Ya'll all are fuck lame for making this web site, i WONDER DO YA'LL HAVE ONE about myspace, cause thats the web site that gets people in the most, you really haven't heard somthing over the top about bebo, you know why? Cause its not the fuckin serious, and who ever mad this web site really doesn't have no life at all, and ya'll talkin about bebo asking for e-mail passwords, I'm up here about to paste my comment and ya'll askin me for my username and password I mean what it that............but I'm gonna click on Anonymous
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