Re: [PLUG] Avoid Alignable.com -- They use contact harvesting and spam

[George via plug <plug@lists.phillylinux.org>]

Profuse apologies for the previous RichTextFile, I forgot to click <plain text>
Yet another of those little gotchas.

A word to the wise,

TLDR: Avoid "Alignable.com".  They harvest naive members' contact lists and send out spam 
that verges on phishing...

I'd never heard of them until this morning when I received the following:

> From $personal_acquaintance via Aligned
> 
> Hi George,
> 
> It’s $personal_acquaintance.first_name from $personal_acquaintance.organization
> 
> I’d like to be able to refer customers to you, so I’ve added you to my network on Alignable, a site exclusively for business owners to network with each other				                   
> 
>     <$probably_a_phishing_link_or_leads_to_one>
>
>     (Note: this invite expires in 24 hours)

A little OSINT digging found users who liked spam (leads!!!!) and an opaque business model...

I tactfully contacted $personal_acquaintance directly, in case they wanted to do business 
with me, and got back:

> My apologies that Alignable seems to have sent an automatic message to all my contacts! Glad to be in touch though ,,, 

So, at least I got to have a subsequent social exchange of email!

It makes me glad that I ignore LinkedIn's weekly pleas for my contacts list (just one click!!!)

No real harm done, except likely a lot of $personal_acquaintance's time and and a little of 
my time wasted, 

Nevertheless I'm inspired to let a larger group know about these <expletives redacted> at 
alignable.com .

-- 
George (feeling jaded today) Zipperlen


___________________________________________________________________________
Philadelphia Linux Users Group         --        http://www.phillylinux.org
Announcements - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce
General Discussion  --   http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug