Yaari is a Scam!!! It invades your privacy and SPAMs your contacts.

Posted on March 19, 2008
Filed Under Blogging and the Internet, Information | Viewed 1013 times

I was surprised to receive this in my official email:

Dine Racoma wants you to join Yaari!

Is Dine your friend?

Yes, Dine is my friend! No, Dine isn’t my friend.

Please respond or Dine might think you said no

Thanks,
The Yaari Team

____
You are receiving this message because someone you know registered for Yaari and listed you as a contact.
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

Then when I opened my personal email (gmail) , I was shocked to find Out of Office Auto-Replies from many people (a lot of whom I do not even know, but remember to have at one time being part of the bulk mails sent to me).

Yaari? I asked myself. What is Yaari? Now I remember. Last February, friend Lorna had to frantically send an email to all her contacts, me included, saying,

.

Hi, everyone! I’m making a concerted effort to educate us about these mass mailing worms (virus). My apologies since even the best of us can get scammed no matter how many anti-spam filters there are. I do have facebook, multiply, orkut, myspace, friendster as social networking sites—- and I’m perfectly happy with them. I didn’t know that this Yaari email, just like Jhoos (which is different from the internet TV, Joost) was being spread from many of my friends’ email addresses—- and although it is a social networking site, just like Shelfari (which is also a book club/social networking site), it has fine print that membership allows them to access our email addresses to invite other people. Now, that is not right! We should have the choice of choosing who we want (from our address book) to join us. Facebook does a good job of this. We have to manually click who we want to join.

I did further research. I think Yaari and Jhoos employ “worms” to get email addresses that had gone to a person’s account and had automatically been listed in the person’s directory. One of my friends in my Overseas Filipino Caucus for Sustainable Development group recommends an old trick.

It was too late when I got Lorna’s email, because I have already clicked Yes to it—thinking that a referral from Lorna could mean a good one, and I would not stand to lose a thing.. Immediately after I got Lorna’s email, I unsubscribed. And I thought I was safe.

Now, 6 weeks later, I am a victim—my privacy has been invaded. For it is only I who know my contacts and those I send emails to. I have been scammed, and so have my contacts been spammed!

As I do not have the time to send individual emails to my friends and contacts in cyberspace, I am posting this APOLOGY and WARNING in my blog.

BEWARE of YAARI! It is cashing in on the popularity of the different social networks like Friendster, Multiply, Facebook, etc., but it uses shady tactics which will make you literally puke!

You will find more of this here and here. Also, Angelo has posted something similar, this time with tagged.com. Read it here.

Comments

27 Responses to “Yaari is a Scam!!! It invades your privacy and SPAMs your contacts.”

arge on March 19th, 2008 11:14 am

Hi Tita Dine,

I just checked my email and saw “your invitation.” I tried to check out Yaari first before hitting the “Yes, Dine is my friend” link. I then came across a social networking site for Indians. I didn’t think that you would be engaged in that kind of thing so I tried to visit your blog first and saw this post.

Thanks
noemi on March 19th, 2008 1:37 pm

Yaari gives you no option NOT to allow your contacts to be added.

Filter your Yaari to land in your spam box.
prudence on March 19th, 2008 2:09 pm

good thing I didn’t click on the link. But too bad you have to be a victim. I’ll check about this networking site some more later
lisaflor on March 19th, 2008 5:42 pm

Whoa, buti na lang I saw your blog first. Medyo naweirdo-han din ako with the invite, eh di pa nga po tayo friends sa friendster, hehehe. Thanks for the warning.
myepinoy on March 19th, 2008 7:58 pm

Talagang Yari ka dito.

The next thing to wait for is a surprise call or a bogus investment proposal. That’s what happened to an officemate.

Thanks for the information.
ApplesH on March 19th, 2008 10:12 pm

Sexymom – I was actually surprised to see the invite in my inbox. It was kind of weird to get something like that from you because I felt you wouldn’t send something as impersonal as an automated invite. Good thing I deleted it reading this post.
Meeya on March 20th, 2008 7:32 am

hi sexymom, i was hoping that you wouldn’t feel bad that i didn’t accept your invitation, hehe. yup, you “sent” a yaari email invitation to me but i didn’t accept it (i have too many networking sites already, haha).

those spammers are so kapal no? they take advantage of people’s relationships. haaay.
Kimmy on March 20th, 2008 8:03 am

Mommy Dine! I received an e-mail telling me that you have invited me to Yaari. Good thing I didn’t sign up. Thanks for the info.
Kyels on March 20th, 2008 9:33 am

Tita, I checked my e-mail this morning and saw the similar invitation to join Yaari pero I did not click on it b/c is ‘smelled fishy’. Anyway, thanks for warning us though. Scams and spams; they’re always there, noh? Too bad there are no ways to stop them from coming. One of the downside of technology.
Rach (Heart of Rachel) on March 20th, 2008 10:26 am

Thanks Dine for this valuable info.
Leah on March 20th, 2008 12:15 pm

I got one of those from you. I deleted that email. It thought it was another social network and I dont need to sign up for another one. Good thing to know its spam. I’ll watch out for those from now on.
Shoshana on March 20th, 2008 3:00 pm

I have gotten that e-mail…I thought it’s weird.
Jehzeel Laurente on March 20th, 2008 6:38 pm

ohhh.. ako walang natanggap.. buti nalang nabasa ko to bago ko matanggap
Carlo on March 20th, 2008 7:07 pm

I got same email too.

Dine Racoma wants you to join Yaari!

Is Dine your friend?

Yes, Dine is my friend! No, Dine isn’t my friend.

Please respond or Dine might think you said no

Thanks,
The Yaari Team

You are receiving this message because someone you know registered for Yaari and listed you as a contact.
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
Jane on March 21st, 2008 12:18 am

I got one from you too! But in the past I remember getting Yaari infivations from other friends too. They probably got spammed like you.

I think I will stick with the more popular ones and not go around clicking. I don’t even have a Facebook profile yet. hehehe. can’t even keep up with blogging!

Thanks for the post!
haze on March 21st, 2008 7:28 pm

I just received it 2 days ago, good thing haven’t accepted yet, I almost said yes! Now, I know will delete them, thanks Tita for the info !
jhay on March 21st, 2008 9:00 pm

Received my invitation from you almost 3 days ago mam. I was really puzzled by it, but before I clicked on the confirmation link I Googled for Yaari and since nothing sensible came up, I ignored the email.

I guess I was lucky.

Curse these scammers and privacy pirates.
auee on March 22nd, 2008 1:09 am

Whoah… hang on, you just click YES and they get in my gmail account???

Is this true? How do I stop it?

Argg stupid of me, nagtaka na nga ako when I got “your” email. Thinking surely you’d prefer friendster or facebook rather than an indian site…
Joel on March 22nd, 2008 7:18 am

Thanks for the warning.

I only stay with the following “social” sites:

Flickr, Facebook, and Twitter.

(My “backup” are Friendster and Multiply but I’m slowly easing out of these two because the ads are pushing me out. LOL.)

Anyway, these are the tried and tested ones and I don’t see myself joining any other sites.
Ade on March 22nd, 2008 11:15 am

That was unbelivably low of them.
Belle on March 22nd, 2008 12:20 pm

i got it, too, but chose to ignore it. good job on my part! from now on, i will be even extra careful.
FruityOaty on March 22nd, 2008 9:49 pm

I got that invitation from you, too.

Fortunately for me, I haven’t had time to fully check out the site. More fortunate is the fact that I was about to check it out 15 minutes ago, until I received the e-mail from you warning us. Whoah, saved.

Yes, I’m always careful with e-mails and signing up for stuff, but I developed a suspicious, non-trusting mind (LOL) through my job as a software tester/ quality analyst (where we, the testers don’t believe what project managers & developers tell us).
vk on March 22nd, 2008 10:46 pm

i recieved this email too,
mabuti nag-manyana ako,
sabi ko mamaya na, kasi bc,

thanks, hindi ko daritso na i-click, kasi sabi pa, are you friend of Dine or not….

ignore ko, babalik na ako to read it first bago ko i-accept.

Happy Easter, dine
Ami on March 24th, 2008 10:57 am

Hi Ms. Dine,
Yes, I got that invite too but I was not really sure if we’re friends na nga, so I clicked neither yes or no, LOL! Thanks for this info.
Micamyx on March 24th, 2008 7:20 pm

I saw your ‘invitation’ too. Naku, Yaari Ka!
Warren Nicholson Y. Fernando on March 28th, 2008 11:42 pm

I’m afraid I too am a victim. In a naive response I fillled up the form and sent it. I don’t blame for what happened. It was my fault too because I’m presently making a blog from livejournal.com and I thought I could get more contacts if I signed up. It was too late when I read your post and that of your son regarding this email.
mari on August 8th, 2008 5:38 am

i’ve been hit my this yaari virus, too! i even sent an apology email to all the people in my contact list just to assure them that the invite they received didn’t come from me.