My friend Val recently posted on my Facebook wall encouraging me to join Goodreads so that we could see what each other was reading. I already use Visual Bookshelf on Facebook, so I wasn’t too enthusiastic about switching and having to re-add all my books. However, I thought I would give it a try, since I always love to see what Val’s reading. When she was gone in Europe last summer I borrowed a huge stack of her great book collection and enjoyed some of them so much that I ended up buying them. So sure, I thought I would sign up.
I created a profile and then wanted to add Val as a friend. This is where the trouble started. Goodreads asks you if you want to see who of your friends are using it. So you give it your Gmail log-in details, and it pulls up your contacts who are also Goodreads members. It came up with a list of 5 people. I unchecked everyone who wasn’t Val, and customized the message to read something along the lines of “okay, I’m going to try this out, even though it’s a pain in the butt to add all the books!” and hit send. Then a little tiny message appeared saying “Thanks! You’ve just sent 317 invitations!”
Wait, WHAT?
I thought it had to be a typo. So I went through the motions again, and saw, much to my horror, that when you get to the second page, it pulls up ANOTHER list that includes every single person you have ever emailed or gotten email from in Gmail. EVER.
My heart stopped. Oh my god, who did this just get sent to???!!! I checked my Gmail and saw the list of who it went to. Old boyfriends. University professors. Doctors, my dentist, my therapist. Airmiles customer service. My boss. Random craigslist ads for used furniture. Venus envy, our local women’s health shop. My grad school administrator. The president and board of governors of the university, whom I emailed back when the support staff were on strike. The maker of some great software that I like to use to organize journal articles. Artists I had been in contact with when I wrote about their work in my other blog. And so on. Pretty much my entire universe.
Scanning the list, I felt SO MORTIFIED. I immediately deleted my Goodreads profile so that the entire world wouldn’t see my collection of self-help books and sappy Mitch Albom titles. I am not sure what the appropriate manner of damage control is for unexpected spamming of your contacts, having never encountered this before, but I think I will just have to spam everyone again with a quick “sorry!” email.
Two lessons learned here: Despite thinking I was pretty web-savvy, I need to be more careful online. And Goodreads sucks.
2 Comments
November 20, 2008 at 5:59 pm
Hey, found your post from a Google search on Goodreads spam. I wish I remembered what I clicked and unclicked, but I thought I was adding the two friends who already have it. I signed on this morning and had a new Goodreads friend – who WASN’T one of the two already on it. Apparently, I sent a mass spam invite to my whole Facebook friend list. How stupid do I feel right now? And yeah, I thought I was web savvy too.
November 20, 2008 at 7:30 pm
Ugh, that sucks! I feel your pain Rosey. Thank you for sharing though…knowing it’s not just me makes me feel a little teeny bit less stupid. Hey, at least on Facebook people are used to being spammed with random apps/zombies/food fights/groups?