Snimmer is EVIL

A number of sites online ask you for your email address and password. Most often, I tend to be skeptical and yet, being a sucker for a beta test, I often cringe and give in. That is what happened today when I unwittingly gave my credentials to a site called Snimmer. (I do not wish to link to it since I believe it should not be given any sort of links).  Bottomline Snimmer is EVIL. It sends out a clandestine invitation to all my friends on Gmail impersonating it as though it came from me legitimately. What is annoying is that it DOES NOT ASK FOR ANY CONFIRMATION.

Here is a snippet of the email it sends out:

SNIMMER - My Web IM Space
Hi, this is my IM Page on SNIMMER. You can chat with me there:
http://akshayjava.snimmer.com/

This really makes the case for the use of OpenID and OAuth. If you are aware of any other sites that are misusing user credentials, leave me comments and I will check on these to compile a blacklist of untrustworthy sites.

 

Comments

[Sasha]

of course it asked you. you just ignored it.

[Akshay Java]

Well I still think Snimmer is a completely dodgy service. See also the techcrunch review of the site:

When you use the service and sign on there is an opt-out to tell all your friends about the service. I caught it the first time and unchecked it, but on a second login I forgot and all of my GTalk friends were IMed with a message about Snimmer. I then spent thirty minutes apologizing to everyone who IMed me with “WTF” or something similar.

Evidently, what part of usability does snimmer not get?

And now looks to me like Snimmer is turning into a nightcitychat.com where the original URL redirects to (and I still refuse to link to it) -- sounds even more shady to me!

So, thanks but no thanks Sasha... I dont think it is the users fault. Nothing really justifies you spamming a gizillion people on IM pretending it to be from me WITHOUT ANY WARNING or INDICATION WHATSOEVER!

[Sasha]

This is the relevant code from snimmer.com.

/tr/
/td/
/a href="#" title="You can send email and IM invitations to your IM contacts."
onclick="var $=document.getElementById('commentInvite');if($)$.innerHTML='Send email and IM invitations to all your friends';"
//%=_("Invite All Friends")%//a
/td/
/td/
/input type='radio' name='nc_autoinvite' value='0' // /a href="#" id="bodylink" title="This setting will not invite anyone."/No//a/
/input type='radio' name='nc_autoinvite' checked value='1' /
/a href="#" id="bodylink" title="This setting will send email and IM invitations to your IM contacts.">Yes /td
/tr

%=_(...")% - means that this string of text is translated in 10+ languages.

As you can see I am not lying. The choice was there for you, as well as the explanation of the choice selector in this radiobutton does. Whether or not usability of this form is ideal is a moot point at this stage - snimmer.com is now closed. Maybe you can be man enough to amend your post.

[Akshay Java]

OK Sasha, if it makes you feel any better - FINE! perhaps, I may have missed the "radio button" (only because the usability sucked!). But that does not condone Snimmer of spamming EVERYONE on IM *AND* via email. SPAM is SPAM one way or another. Whats worse Snimmer sent a message as if it came directly from ME! This clandestine way of sending the message without clearly specifying or showing me the actual content of the message is what really pissed me (and others on my gtalk and elsewhere -- see comments in techcrunch post) off. I stand by what I said in my post. Perhaps you will be man enough to admit that what you were doing is sending people unwanted email/IM -- which is essentially SPAMMING! Rather than listening to your users you have basically called the whole usability issue a moot point. Well, I hope that the nightcitychat.com site you are creating is perhaps something more fruitful -- Good luck with it!

[Sasha]

I listened, mate :-)

This form, along with the rest of the site is now history.