MySpace hacks their member's contact lists

A friend of mine joined Myspace several months ago. I got invitations from "him" to 5 of my private, never been published anywhere, email addresses. I sent him a very to the point email telling him to get my information out of his account immediately. He claimed that he didn't send any invitation to me at all and he did not give MySpace any information about me.

2 days ago I got 5 more invitations from "him" to the same 5 email addresses. I emailed him and he responded that he has not used his MySpace account for at least a couple of months and certainly did not send me any invitations.

I sent a complaint to MySpace and they have not responded, but sent 5 more emails with a subject line "test" and a link to a survey about my MySpace account. I've never had a MySpace account. I've never sent them an email until yesterday. I don't go to their web site. I don't even like MySpace.

Does anyone have any suggestions about how I can get them to purge my personal information from their data base and leave me the hell alone. And how did MySpace get this information in the first place.

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The Feds? http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35890739/ns/technology_and_science-security/

MySpace Identity Theft? http://www.technologyevangelist.com/2007/12/myspace_identity_the.html

Good luck JF, i hope you can get this resolved.

 

Excellent articles. The cop stuff I have suspected for some time. I know if I was a cop I would be on the internet and I know people give out way too much info. Which is one of the reasons I don't like Myspace and FaceBook. But I think these are legitimate emails from MySpace. This is the url that the join links point to:
http://signups.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=signup

3 of the 5 email addresses were only used between me and 2 friends over a year ago while relaying legal information concerning a court case, and never used anywhere else. The second person has never joined MySpace either, which leaves only the friend who did join MySpace for the source of the email addresses.

I have a catch all email box and I use different email addresses in order to keep track of where they end up. Just doing this has given me a wealth of information about internet activities of companies and individuals. For instance, porno sites sell or trade their customer's email addresses. (if you catch them at it they will give you a free subscription for as long as a year).

I've been on the internet for about 12 years, been through roughly 250 domain names and made about a thousand web pages. And, I still end up on a spoofed page occasionally. You can't let your guard down for one second.

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That url looks 100% legit. My first thoughts were as mentioned above. But i scratched around a little this morning, and i found something interesting on google. It seems facebook has a feature that can tap into your address book, and auto send invites to everyone in it.

BTW, this is what i typed into google search: "getting myspace invitations not sent from friends". Google then tricked me into this facebook article by page four. But myspace probably does the same thing i'm sure.

Quote:
Those new to Facebook are prompted to send a friend request to everyone in their address book (although they have the option to skip this step).

That’s what happened to Laura Hesse, 36, of Orange, Calif. When she signed up for Facebook in August, she had a friend talk her through the initial setup. In the process, she sent a mass invitation of friendship to everyone in her address book — including a family member she had cut all ties with.

“I had no idea what I was doing!” Hesse said. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, no, she’s going to get it!’ ”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27775484/

Maybe this is how it happened.

 

I don't have a MS account, but I did disable my face book page. Some clever person got into my account and changed the E-Mail and password, then proceeded to post porn on all the pages belonging to the people on my friends list. I contacted them and it took over a week to get my account back, needless to say I will never use those kind of sites again.

 

Myspace...that name rings a bell.

I logged on the other day and saw tumbleweed.

 

I smell user error.

Given the title on the link is "When you don't want to be Facebook friends - Digital Life- msnbc.com"

How exactly did Google "trick" you ? It's clear the link is going to take you to something about Facebook.

I think you don't understand how Google search results work.

 

Try it yourself.
Google: getting myspace invitations not sent from friends (see page four)

Here, i'll even do it for you: http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=gett...rom+friends&start=30&sa=N&fp=53917326f5971b16 Seventh one down.

Welcome to the machine.

 

Google search results work simplistically. You pay, you get the top spots. Aside from that, it's a popularity contest. Or, is it? I know when I google my real name, I'm in the #2 spot under a senator, and have more on the first page. I beat out a race car driver, athlete, teamster boss, producer and a few more who should be much more popular than me. I used to be # 1 until played around and broke the google rules.

It's all about page design, words and how many sites link to yours. For a few hundred $ you can buy a Russian bot program that will find forums, such as this one, and place your links on their pages. I've seen some of those Russian Viagra sites with as many as 80,000 links on discussion boards and blogs. I've put up a few discussion boards and these guys can be a pain in the ass, especially when they put porno pictures on children's sites.

If you search for porn, meds, computer games or software on a search engine you will likely end up on a Russian site and get ripped off. The Russian Mafia is alive and well and lurking on google. A friend of mine sent me a copy of the last Star Trek movie before it hit the theaters. It was made in Russia.

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I'm sure that is what happened, but the second round of invitations were not a mistake by my friend. He hasn't been to his MySpace account for a couple of months. They evidently save these email addresses and periodically send them out in search of new members.

Both of us are trying to contact them about this incident, but MySpace will not answer our inquiries. They don't even answer their phone.

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This is what I got back from MySpace in response to my email telling them to purge my personal information from their computers:

When I click on the link to unsubscribe, I only get half of the page and cannot see the opt-out option. Thing is, I never opted-in.

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I've been on MySpace for a few years now and it is a love/hate affair.

I have been hacked and a bootleg account with a name close to mine and my pix set up, prolly by some kid with a sense of humor (his captions on my pix were kinda funny). It took nearly a month for MySpace to get rid of the imposter. I told them it was a bunch of underage kids being solicited, using my image. They have a procedure which requires you take a pic with a sign of ur user #.

Anyhow, within MySpace, what you describe was quite common about a year or two ago. I clicked on some link from a friend. Before I knew it that message was going to all my friends. I sent out a PM telling them it was a trojan doing it and had to change my password to keep any new ones from going out as did all those who clicked the link. Those are just annoyances within MySpace that we get used to. I do not click any links there any more.

Also, of all the places I visit on the Web, MySpace is the only one where a virus warning sign comes up frequently and I get off line. I think it is the biggest target of viruses and likely that is what happened to your friends messages going out.

If it weren't for the several friends around the world that I communicate with, I'd get rid of it. But it is fun recreation. (& I actually connected physically with someone by way of MySpace).

 

Thing is, Everyone in your address book may not be a member of MySpace. That means they are stealing my private information when they take it out of someone's address book. Then they use it to send unsolicited commercial email, a violation of federal law. This is clearly a violation of my privacy.

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You are a moron. You just did exactly what I did and... what.. reposted it ? Why ? Oh I know, you failed to understand my reply.

Nope, it isnt, outside of the PAID results.

The page weight is important... and no I dont mean its bit size, im talking about it importance on the web. Spaming a url on this website would do fuck all.

Face it. You don't know what you're typing about. I wish you a long life as a malware mule.

 

And that is why I don't touch that social networking bullshit. It's an absolute disaster, from a privacy/sanity standpoint. There are sites that almost did it right... virb.com seemed like it wouldn't suck, back in the day. I still have an orphaned virb page... in fact, you just inspired me to delete it, but the email account it was attached too was purged for inactivity years ago... But the big (and small ones are obviously useless) social networking sites are leeches, and need to be killed. with fire.

 

you're kidding right?

you're a lifer now kid, in the system forever

 

I didn't say I used a bot program, because I don't.

I google my real name, and out of 22,100 hits, my web sites are 3 out of the top 10. When someone googles relevant terms, my sites are often #1 or #2. You saying that I don't know what I'm typing about amuses me. Thanks for the laugh.

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I know.

Aside from 15 invitations from MySpace in the past week I've only received 2 spam emails, and I had both of their web pages deleted. These were email with links to a page on freehostia.com advertising porn. All you have to do is send freehostia a message from their contact form and they will delete the page.

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You should learn how to spell before you call someone else a moron.

I never claimed to be an expert on the subject, i was trying to help someone figure out a problem. Then you replied with this helpful post:

And what is this supposed to mean? -"You just did exactly what I did and... what.. reposted it ? Why ? Oh I know, you failed to understand my reply."

It's clear You didn't understand My reply! Again, i never claimed to be an expert. But i clicked on my last link (the google search one) to be sure anyway, and it was not there. I thought it may have moved, so i went looking for it.

Then i found this:


My post is on page one! (woo hoo)

Here's your proof that facebook shows up on myspace searches, in case you didn't believe it:


I said i was 'tricked' because i didn't think i should be finding facebook results on myspace searches. I got confused and posted the link before i realized what happened.

If you're so smart, why don't you give advice instead of posting shit like: "I smell user error", and "I think you don't understand how Google search results work."

Thanks for your help.

 

I understood your post and your links were very helpful in understanding the problem I'm having.

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