Spymac is not the only spammer that abuse people in asking for their webmail credentials to exploit users' address book in a deceptive viral practice. According to this article and comments on Slashdot, you can add Flixster and Facebook to the list. It reminds me that Plaxo used to do that, and that was a strong enough repellent for me to not only use them but bar them from sending me any further message. Those guys play in the same league as spammers, phishers and scammers.
More spamming through abuse of AOL, Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail accounts
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Copie d'écran de la traduction Google de "sarkozy sarkozy sarkozy" en "Blair defends Bush".
As the Flixster co-founder points out on the original post, the blogger's own screenshots show a screen saying "On the next page you will be able to select whom to invite" (and I have no reason to believe there is no actual next page). Even though I don't personally like that kind of self-promotion, because it does take advantage of people being too lazy to understand what's written and find the "Do it later" button, it's neither an exploit nor deceptive. (And, considering how popular Facebook is, I'm sure they do it the same way.)
Facebook asks you if you want it to check if any of your friends are already online through your (Gmail/Hotmail/Yahoo) email account. Once this is performed, it proposes the user to invite selected non-facebook friend.
Both actions are performed only if the user wants them to be performed (there is skip this step button, the boxes are unchecked); they are in no way imposed. That's not the same league. The stupidity of the user should not be reported on the tool they use.
i want e-mail