Don’t Compromise Your Contact Details with ShoppyBag.com
Having contact with direct advertisers is rewarding in a sense that you don’t have to deal with third parties who have some ‘cut’ or share with the advertising fee. So when I received an email from one of the advertisers, I thought it was legitimate and something that can enhance my relationship with other clients. It was an invitation to join ShoppyBag.
Smells something fishy... Phishing?!
The name itself sounds like an e-commerce or social networking site. But before responding to that email request, I verified if the said advertiser sent the same invite to other people I know. And I was surprised to learn that ShoppyBag is a suspicious site and some of my friends are receiving invites from different people they knew. I gather more information from the web and here’s what I found out:
• ShoppyBag is an emerging social network site specializing in fashion and shopping. Just like Facebook, users can create profiles and connect with people who share the same shopping interests. Its model is recreation of “shopping mall outing” experience on the web. – Wiki.Answers.com
• There has been lots of complaints about ShoppyBag’s spam emails and phishing. Truth is:
ShoppyBags invitation emails are html encoded and contain pixel tags that log various data and transmits this information back to shoppybag. The email also reads every cookies on your computer and transmits this back to them. In other words, ShoppyBag’s invitation/sign-up process is a mechanism to have potential new sign-ups spam their contacts and invade their privacy with sneaky embedded code that harvests the users data and send it to ShoppyBag. ShoppyBag also states clearly in their “Terms of Service” that they will use all your personal information for commercial purposes and will share it with third parties. - GMail Help Forum
• Once a person signed up with ShoppyBag, his or her contact list is compromised because of allowed access as he or she agreed with the terms of services. Item 6 states that:
“You consent to receive commercial e-mail messages from shoppybag and its affiliates, and acknowledge and agree that your email addresses and other personal information may be used by shoppybag for the purpose of initiating commercial e-mail messages.”
• ShoppyBag first targeted GMail users so their Google accounts are linked to ShoppyBag. To manage security settings, ShoppyBag must be removed from Google accounts to deny site and application permission.
With this, I decided not to click on the signup link.
• Clicking the link and signing up with ShoppyBag have the same result, granting permission for them to access your contact’s emails. Whether you finish the signup process or not, some information are already compromised.
To clarify, ShoppyBag is not a virus. It is a social-networking / shopping site with malicious activity of spamming all your contacts. What a desperate move to expand their network!
Some emails deserves to be deleted right away. You have to protect your online privacy and it’s one important reminder even if you are making money online or not.
Tags: Online Safety, Privacy Protection
Thanks for sharing this info. I was a victim of this social network. Deleted my account and filtered their emails as spam. Hope it works.
I almost fall for it, too since I know the sender. In fact, I received another email from ShoppyBag about someone tagging a photo of me. Seems that emails of my friends are being compromised. They might have signed up already.