Do Not Join Quechup
About two days ago, I received an email invitation to join a social networking site called Quechup from someone who I communicate regularly with via email. Immediately within a few hours I received a direct email from my friend telling me that people were reporting back stating that they were received invites from her. Today, I received an invite to join Quechup from my self that was sent to 5 different email addresses of my own. They are in my gmail inbox. I am quickly learning that some how Quechup has accessed my entire address book and has sent out invites to all contacts within with an invitation to join Quechup.
I have NOT asked anyone to join Quechup. I know nothing about Quechup other than the fact that some how something is causing all these invites to go out to all my contacts and friends. My first experience with this terrible situation happed about 2 days ago when I received an invite. At the time, not knowing it was a scam and trusting that this came from a friend, I joined Quechup. Two days later, now Quechup is sending invites to all my contacts.
WARNING DO NOT JOIN QUECHUP
I have NOT investigated or educated myself with this quechup situation other than the above mentioned. I am not happy with them and would very much like to see that their site, business and operations get shut down.
If you receive an email similar to this:
Do Not Join. Mark the email as spam and cross your fingers that what every mystery lies within doesn’t spread into your address book. If anyone has any information that can productively be shared about how prevent Quechup from spreading, please come forward and help. This mystery of Quechup is spreading like wildfire throughout the Internet. Any advice, tips or suggestions that can be offered here, please step forward and provide you comment. I will try my best to search the blogosphere and find solutions and answers.
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Date/Time: 9-8-2007 22:16:37 Comment #4832
Yep, I just got that email.
Date/Time: 9-8-2007 22:37:17 Comment #4833
It is well known that gmail stores your address book within a temporary javascript file or something like that. So, if you stay logged into gmail other sites can in fact read this file.
Look it up. This is the first time I have seen this actually used though.
Date/Time: 9-8-2007 22:49:35 Comment #4834
Wow. You know what… I never thought about that, and after hearing you say that… it makes total sense. Wow..
FYI to anyone who is having problems. Quechup.com is hosted by http://www.RackSpace.com. I just got off the phone with RackSpace and they said to send an email to abuse@rackspace.com with information and details about Quechup.com. If you are receving these invite emails, I would recommend sending that email. Quechup.com some how has attained a copy of my address book and is sending out these invites to my contacts. Quechup.com should not be allowed to do that. They are still online and I would imagine are still sending out invites to not only my contacts within my address book but also hundreds if not thousands of more address books from bloggers in the blogosphere.
Date/Time: 9-8-2007 23:06:16 Comment #4835
If you are a member of Quechup.com here is a screen shot that will show you how to cancel:
When you cancel you can also include a message. Here was mine:
Date/Time: 9-8-2007 23:55:10 Comment #4838
Thanks for the heads up Garry, there seems to be a lot more bad news about the place than there is good news.
Chris
Date/Time: 9-9-2007 02:28:14 Comment #4841
Thanks for letting us know. I hate this c**p, they should be shut down at once for misrepresenting themselves – and spam, too.
Date/Time: 9-9-2007 05:21:18 Comment #4843
Hey Gary
Thanks for the heads up – much appreciated.
Date/Time: 9-9-2007 07:07:13 Comment #4845
Thanks for reminding us.
Knowing about this Quechup case will make me more circumspect the next time i join any site.
Keep us updated on the actions taken by RackSpace.
Date/Time: 9-9-2007 08:00:58 Comment #4846
Quechup is indeed bad news. I encourage everyone who signed up for them to delete their account. That should be a good prize for their underhanded tactics. Check my post on this issue at
http://nthambazale.blogspot.com/2007/09/quenchup-spam.html
Date/Time: 9-9-2007 08:09:17 Comment #4847
I have not received the email as yet but I will look out for it. I would not have joined anyway because I have Hi5 and Facebook and those two are enough to run me into the ground keeping up with what is going on, but thanks anyway.
Date/Time: 9-9-2007 08:42:27 Comment #4848
Interesting … If Quechup is using a cross-site scripting exploit, that would explain why so many people are being burned by it. I’d wondered if there were really that many idiots who’d just give their GMail passwords to a stranger.
RackSpace.com is notorious for hosting spammer websites.
Date/Time: 9-9-2007 09:45:58 Comment #4852
Thanks for letting me know, I did get your email and then some.
Date/Time: 9-9-2007 10:24:14 Comment #4854
That doesn’t surprise me about RackSpace.com based off the phone conversation I had with them last night. I didn’t want to bash them publicly, but I can say that the phone conversation with them last night was a total joke. All in all, they wanted me to become a paid hosting customer before they provided any support. I told them that I was just giving them a courtesy call that might help prevent them from getting sued. LOL!!! I closed out the conversation by saying I would rather host my site using an IBM 486 with a 1800 Baud modem before I would host my site with them.
Date/Time: 9-9-2007 11:57:16 Comment #4856
I did a whois lookup on them and it looks like their web host is rackspace. You might want to contact racksapce about this. I am sure they have policy against this sort of thing.
Date/Time: 9-9-2007 12:32:10 Comment #4857
Hey George,
Thanks for the whois look up. I did that last night and already contacted RackSpace.com and reported them. Read my comment directly above yours for some added humor.
Date/Time: 9-9-2007 12:42:13 Comment #4859
Ooops, somehow I missed that whole part of the conversation. I read your original post last night and the first two comments. Wow, that is surprising! Maybe rackspace owns Quechup
Date/Time: 9-9-2007 15:36:00 Comment #4862
I think RackSpace is going to get owned if they don’t shut them down soon. LOL!!!
Date/Time: 9-10-2007 09:34:36 Comment #4879
I use yahoo for email and I didn’t get the quechup email.
Thanks for the heads up though.
Date/Time: 9-10-2007 11:59:45 Comment #4886
I got the email and signed up before I read this post or got the email from you telling me that it was a scam. I hope that they don’t end up doing this to me. I thought that it was a social networking site but it looked kind of like a dating site so I cancelled my membership right after I signed up. I hope that I cancelled it on time before they did this to me. Thank you for writing this post.
Date/Time: 9-10-2007 12:09:08 Comment #4887
That is really all you can do. Just wait and see, maybe inform people in your address book in advanced just in case. I still don’t know how they are doing this.
apexad left a good comment on the top of the list here that mentions Gmail and javascript. I am wondering if these attacks are isolated to only Gmail users?
Date/Time: 9-2-2008 07:50:18 Comment #20615
I am a member of Quechup. Just like you guys, I got an invite from a friend and now I don’t think he even gets online. What really sucks is you have to “upgrade” your membership and PAY to SEND messages to other people. WHAT? I have to pay to “send” a message? I’ll stick with Myspace thank you. Good luck guys with shutting these guys down.
Date/Time: 10-21-2008 13:21:09 Comment #24587
if you sign up for a free membership with Quechup you get bombarded with mail allegedly from girls this is a scam
because when you upgrade to premium membership it all stops you don’t get any mail it is all a scam to get you to upgrade their just fake profiles that are sending you mail just to get you to upgrade I set up to profiles on free membership and was getting the same mail