Monday, February 11, 2008

Moms...Post Your Comments Here!

I know a lot of you have seen this blog, about 228 of you have come in through my Google AdWords ad, but not a lot of you are posting.

I know many of you LOVE the community on Mamasource, and that is great. I have no grievances about the community aspect of Mamasource, just the way that Artie Wu is building his subscriber base and what he is doing to you all without you even knowing.

There are an equal number of you who've been embarrassed, like me, because you've spread Tree Spam and Flower Spam to everyone in your email address book.

If you like Mamasource, write them at support@mamasource.com and tell them how much you'd like to see the site continue, without spreading invites throughout your whole address book.

If you think they are spammers, that is okay too, write them and tell them! If you'd rather report them, then contact your ISP and let them know what's going on. You can also take those emails and forward them, in their entirety, to spam@uce.gov

Above all, feel free to post your comments here for all to see. You can post anonymously, it is okay. I don't care. I only have moderation on so I know when a post comes through, I haven't deleted a post yet.

I really want feedback from all you moms out there!

8 comments:

Maria Alexander said...

If people will also contact the Electronic Freedom Frontier, they might be able to help. They provide free legal assistance to people who have problems with electronic information abuse.

Anonymous said...

My wife was asked to join mamasource by one of her grandchildren, but when she, did the web site asked for her online password. Why would any legal website ask for personnel information to corrupt your private online account? After receiving the invitation to join we are now getting spam mails on a daily basis. This site is a scam that is making money from selling e-mail accounts and passwords to some one.

This is just my observation, but it all seems fishy!

Maria Alexander said...

Just so people know, if they got a flower e-card, the "unsubscribe" link is at the bottom of that card. (I guess there was no link on the tree card.) So, if you got a flower card, just click the unsubscribe link in the card and it will take you off the mailing list. I did that immediately and I've not received any further mail.

Mama What? said...

Maria - That is good to know, because the unsubscribe link on the daily digest only goes to an email preferences page, but there is no preference for getting off the list at all.

In my research I have found many women very unhappy that the emails keep coming and coming.

You can go to support@mamasource.com and ask them to remove you and they will, but technically and legally the unsubscribe link must enable people to get off the list permanently if they choose.

Glad you brought this up and I am equally as glad to know that you've been successful in unsubscribing from something at Mamasource.

Thanks again for bringing this to my attention!

Anonymous said...

i joined mamasource last month and invited a handful of my mom friends -- and i did give them my email password. but thankfully, no mass emails went out.

i do get the daily email, but i actually like it.

if they are truly hijacking entire email addressbooks, i suppose that would mean that there would be a lot of men and non-moms accidentally joining as well. but i haven't seen any of that, it seems to be all moms. though they do have a very diverse range of opinions.

Mama What? said...

Thanks so much for your post and I am so happy to hear that when you entered your password a mass email did not go out to everyone in your book, like so many other women have reported.

Will you change your password anyway? :)

According to Quancast's (http://www.quantcast.com/mamasource.com)
stats on Mamasource, there are quite a few men who are listed as visitors, but I think you would actually have to accept the invitation to get signed up, and I am not sure how many men would accept an invitation to Mamasource.

When I looked at the graph yesterday, I have to admit I was puzzled by the high amount of men who visited the site, but then I don't know how to read the stats with 100% accuracy, nor are they 100% accurate!

Thanks so much for adding your opinion and your thoughts, and I am sincerely glad that you haven't had problems with your address book and you are enjoying the site.

Again, I have no problems with a community site, just with the somewhat dubious practices that are coming from that direction.

Anonymous said...

i actually did not think to change my password... but actually it was a month ago and nothing has happened, maybe i'll just leave it and see if anything happens!

i like these groups of moms, and i just can't imagine that there is something so bad going on. i have noticed that the site is not as smooth as ivillage or babycenter and there are a lot of little rough edges here and there. maybe because the site is run by a man? :)

Maria Alexander said...

Just a note to the Anonymous mom who didn't experience any spam on joining:

People aren't getting spammed (other than the daily email) when they join. But if you get an e-card from Mamasource -- there's one about planting a tree and another about sending your friend a flower -- the system prompts you to enter your Gmail or Yahoo password to check the site to see if you have other friends who are already members. BECAUSE Mamasource is so well-liked and well-known, a lot of us did that, thinking it was a trusted source. The reality of Mamasource is that the owner is using dishonest email harvesting practices. He prompts you to enter your password, then rapes your address book and sends emails to everyone. I've had all kinds of people in my address book tell me they got a flower e-card that I never sent them. SOME OF THESE ARE BUSINESS ASSOCIATES for whom it would be highly unprofessional for me to have sent such an e-card.

What makes Mamasource a good site is not the owner. He's an asshole. It's the people like you who make it a good site. So, please believe that the owner is a jerk. He's making good advertising money off of the site which nice people like you contribute to so that you have a good resource for parents. So, it's not black and white. That's something else that sucks about it.