Quechup - How Invites Really Became Spam
At the beginning of this month I wrote about why I thought invites for uninteresting webapps could more and more be considered a type of spam. I was blaming both the users that let the app invite everyone they wanted, and the apps that just didn’t keep record of who they already spammed.
Now, there is news of a new webapp named Quechup (I’m not linking to them on purpose) that recently took it to the next level by just inviting everyone in your address book, even if you have told them not to do that. Eventually this leads to a “virus” much like those old school email viruses that spread themselves by mailing everyone in the receivers address book. The app has been in the news quite a lot, and I think it proves some of my point, including the fact that it stupid that people are starting to regard invites as something normal without thinking.
Obviously this new trend shows an even worse trend of people giving their email login details to any random app! People should realize that email functions much like a single sign-on at the moment, meaning that with your email login details anyone could get access to any of your other websites. I hope more people will start to realize that we need to develop and adopt new technologies that will enable apps to intercommunicate without having to share the login details.
