MyLife.com : Be Careful Who You Sign Up With Online

I had an email arrive from a friend recently that raised an eyebrow. It said that my friend wanted me to confirm that I knew him to a site called MyLife.com.

Hmm...

This isn't the first time I've seen emails like this before, and the're almost always trouble. Usually the person named as the sender doesn't even know that "they" sent it to me...and like most of these sites, my suspicions were quickly confirmed.

Check it out:
"Just Say No To Mylife.Com"
"MyLife.Com: A New Tool for Bargain-Seeking Stalkers."

Things are rarely really "free"; in this case, these sites take it to a new extreme in order to invade your privacy. This website downloads your contact information on your email and social networking sites then contacts people in your name to try getting them hooked into their snare to further marketing efforts; and once you're in, good luck getting back out.

Much like urban legends perpetuated with emails by everyone and their grandma, these underhanded websites spring up all the time with various names and never seem to go away. By the time people realize what they're really up to it's too late. Your information is out there, and everyone you have in your email has been spammed. It's not like there's one or two of these...they change tactics periodically to escape having their tarnished name hinder profits; the articles I linked above reference a few other names that website company is associated with, for example.

The lesson here is to double and triple check the fine print of sites you're looking at signing up with. Do a Google search for the name of the site and the word "spam" or "scam" to see what, if anything, pops up...before you click that ok button. You may not know what you're actually allowing and all the security in the world won't protect your computer when you give permission to install or upload their weaselware. It should became a second nature just like verifying your emailed "I can't believe this outrageous claim" should be verified on Snopes before you help pass it on with the forward button.

I'm not mad at him. If anything I'm mad at the company for using such weasel tactics to take advantage of people on the Internet. Those web weasels are no better than spammers clogging our junk filters and choking our bandwidth with attempted hijacking of our computers and emails attempting to evade filters.