[IP] Re: Facebook & Addressbook Snarfing Pt II: Speeddate.com = the Gander?

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

________________________________________
From: Anne P. Mitchell, Esq. [amitchell@isipp.com]
Sent: Monday, June 09, 2008 9:51 AM
To: David Farber
Subject: Re: [IP] Re:    Facebook & Addressbook Snarfing Pt II: Speeddate.com = the Gander?

P.S.  I forgot to mention - many of these companies make the "log
into your address book at AOL / Yahoo / Hotmail/ Gmail " pages look
as much like a portal - *in partnership* - with the ISP as they can.
The screenshots in the Flixster article shows them using the AOL logo
next to the username and password fields because we gave them an AOL
address;  if you give them a Yahoo address it will display the Yahoo
logo, if a Gmail address it will display the Gmail logo, and so on.
Thus they *fool* their users into thinking that they are logging in
through a connection authorized by their ISP, or that the ISP
*approves* of the practice.  Trust me, the ISPs do *not* approve.

In fact, every ISP we have talked with about this very much is
*against* this practice, and we know that the unauthorized use of
their logos is being looked at by their legal departments.
Unfortunately, there is so much else going on in the legal realm for
ISPs (phishing, DDOSing, etc.) that this is such small potatoes, we
don't expect to see much done about it.  But you cannot find a social
networking site out there who is doing this who *has* permission from
the ISP to use their logo.

And it fools the users every time.    In fact, a colleague who works
*in Internet security* was themselves fooled by this very tactic, as
we both discovered when I got spam from the site that fooled him,
because I was in his address book.

Kind regards,

Anne

Anne P. Mitchell, Esq
CEO/President
Institute for Spam and Internet Public Policy
http://www.ISIPP.com/
Professor of Law, Lincoln Law School of SJ
Author, "The Email Deliverability Handbook"

Helping ISPs keep the spam out, and legitimate businesses get their
email in, since 1998

http://www.SuretyMail.com/ - a division of ISIPP




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