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

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

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

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