Brilliant Thinking

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I have had a couple of emails and MSN messages in the last couple of days from people I know. These messages are invitations to sign up to a service that allows you to see who has blocked you from their MSN Messenger contacts list.

This sounds like an interesting service - a kind of “who doesn’t like me any more” service feeding off our online social insecurities made all the more visible by the huge growth of online social networking on sites like Facebook, Bebo, etc, etc.

However, in the terms and conditions of these services there is a clause which allows the service to contact anybody on your contacts list with promotional messages. Given that these people did not opt in to receive such promotional messages, this clause is clearly in violation of online privacy rights and is a clever attempt to steal the email addresses of a large proportion of registered MSN Messenger users for spamming.

If you get invited to use a service such as blokr or anything to do with blocked MSN Messenger users, AVOID IT! If you have friends who have already signed up, be prepared to receive a torrent of spam and MSN Messenger messages (which you should also AVOID!) Given that the sign-up sites seem to be “here today, gone tomorrow” this should be a clear sign that they are not to be trusted.