I need to warn our loyal readers about a rather insidious new social networking site, and not just because it’s Yet Another Annoying social netwoRking sIte. The new site, called Yaari, is more than just annoying. It’s dangerous for you and your privacy, and is more Spam 2.0 than Web 2.0. I found out about Yaari from an e-mail I received the other day from a co-worker of mine, which read:
Jane Roe wants you to join Yaari!
Is Jane your friend?
Yes, Jane is my friend! No, Jane isn’t my friend.
Please respond or Jane may think you said no :(
Thanks,
The Yaari Team
____
If you prefer not to receive this email tell us here. If you have any concerns
regarding the content of this message, please email abuse@yaari.com.
Yaari LLC, 358 Angier Ave, Atlanta, GA 30312
Looks pretty legit doesn’t it? I did find it kind of strange, however, that I received two invites each in both of my e-mail accounts. Why would my friend Jane send e-mails to all of my aliases at my work and personal address? This seemed kind of fishy so I asked Jane what the deal was, and she was pretty alarmed, turns out she had never sent me an invite, she had just joined due to an invite from a friend of hers who was equally perplexed, having sent no invites either.
Wanting to get to the bottom of things, I headed on over to Yaari and quickly discovered the likely culprit:
Yaari's Password Theft Page
Scanning the terms of service, I also came across this little gem:
By registering for the Yaari website, … a member agrees to the Terms of Service and consents to allow Yaari to automatically send an email from the member to member’s contacts“
The poor folks who were duped by Yari haven’t been taking it well either, here is what they have had to say:
- Yaari has spammed all the contacts in my address book. The spam invites all contacts in my address book to join yaari or else I will be sad. Try Yaari at your own peril. (link)
- This site sent out over 600 emails to my entire contact list… [The owner] needs a quick 101 on business ethics before she tries to become an entrepreneur (link)
If using your e-mail to spam your friends wasn’t enough, despite their supposed privacy policy, Yaari’s TOS clearly states that they will sign you up for spam as well:
Members consent to receive commercial e-mail messages from Yaari, and acknowledge and agree that their e-mail addresses and other personal information may be used by Yaari for the purpose of initiating commercial e-mail messages.”
You read that right! By agreeing to Yaari’s TOS, you give them a blank check to spam you and all of your contacts as much as they want, even from your own e-mail account. The lesson here seems to be that just as the web evolves to “Web 2.0″, the douche bags preying on web users will also be evolving to “Douche Bag 2.0″. Be careful to read the Terms of Service for all sites you join, and if something a site asks you to do seems insecure, err on the side of caution, no matter who supposedly invited you. And never, EVER give your passwords out to anyone.
-Angry Midwesterner
October 22, 2008 at 12:55 pm
air on the side of caution? AM, your editor needs to submit his gmail password to Yaari!
March 7, 2009 at 10:13 pm
продам Форд-Фокус 2008 года за 200 тр. торг возможет. срочно!!!
+7 960 200 9209
March 11, 2009 at 9:56 am
I never did submit any information to Yaari, yet somehow they got into my yahoo account.
I’m going to try to report them to someone.
John
March 15, 2009 at 2:00 pm
We should all install the Web of Trust add-on into our web browser software (http://www.mywot.com/). “WOT is a Free Internet Security addon for Firefox and IE that warns you about online scams and risky websites that try to deliver malware or send spam.”
Yaari got bad ratings from WOT for trustworthiness, reliability, privacy and safety.
http://www.mywot.com/en/scorecard/yaari.com
April 22, 2009 at 11:58 pm
[…] second link that shows up on a google search for “Yaari.com”! Another creative label is “Social Spamworking”. Wall Street Journal columnist Jeremy Wagstaff has also warned about Yaari.com and has done some […]
May 7, 2009 at 12:08 am
I request your favour to relieve me and all my contacts from sending the unwanted invitation to join Yaari group. Please stop this nuisance in no time.
May 15, 2009 at 5:04 pm
I got many friend request from many of my friends on yaari dot com . For about three months i didnt register but few day before i registered . What happened is that in an attempt to find who all friends are there on yaari i entered my email id and password in a box above which its written that choose friends from your contact and what it, it send about email to my ten thousand contacts. And i didnt knew about it as my system hanged after clicking enter so i closed the browser without complete the search but the next day all my friends send an auto response and i was really irritated with it and still i am thinking how can i correct as mail being send in thousand of number . I am thinking of deleting my yaari account made unfortunately
May 29, 2009 at 11:16 pm
Even I was duped.
Yaari is totally useless spam social networking. I feel like giving the maximum punishment to the CEO and the management involved.
How dare they violate my privacy. They sent emails to from any1 to every1 including my clients and professors.
July 3, 2009 at 9:45 am
haha, you gotta give props to the creators of yaari though. they’re freaking geniuses. think of how much money they must be earning selling all those people’s personal info. Personally, i think anybody stupid enough to hand out their email address AND password deserves to get the fuck spammed out of them. (no offense to those who signed up for yaari)
October 17, 2009 at 4:37 am
I interested join in the yaari. but it all time why refuse? am I not be social?
October 17, 2009 at 4:39 am
hi yaari leader,
r u blind?
December 18, 2009 at 3:19 pm
Hiya – I found this site by mistake. I was looking in Bing for beach suggestions for my family trip when I came upon your site, I have to say your site is pretty cool I just love the theme, its amazing!. I don’t have the time at the moment to totally read your site but I bookmarked it and also signed up for your RSS feeds. I will be back in a day or two. thanks for a great site.
January 15, 2010 at 10:12 pm
A blog that contains custom written articles is a fantastic tool to offer fresh content to viewers of your niche or product market. You can help sway their opinions by offering your expert views and giving them the information to back them up. You then link your blog posts to your main web site to that once the person is persuaded that buying your gizmo, gadget, service or potion is vacant to change their lives they can click on over and buy it from you.
February 11, 2010 at 5:32 am
I just required some information and was searching on Google for it. I visited each page that came on first page and didnt got any relevant result then I thought to check out the second one and got your blog. This is what I wanted!
July 20, 2011 at 6:48 am
hello