Down The Tubes With Tubely Both Viral And Vile

My wife received an email from her sister. She thought it was an invitation to access some online photos her sister was posting. So she clicked the green accept button to view them. After all, the email did come from her sister who is active on Facebook and other online social media networks. Moments later, she realized she was duped, taken in by a Tubely generated email which had not been sent by her sister at all, her sisters address book had been hijacked.

When you type Tubely into a Google search box, the fourth result is: “There is a program called TUBELY with a gmail address that invades …”.  This listing leads us to a forum with 11 posts, the first one is listed below:

Date: Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 4:08 PM: To automatically grab peoples contact folder without telling them, and auto send an email as if the individual truly wanted to invite someone is horrible. I am going to contact Google about your (Tubely) scam/spam and ask them to disable you!

Google’s results continue with complaints and accusations about Tubely, the 5th through 10th results are all negative, accusing Tubely of spamming, scamming, stealing and hijacking. My wife agrees and spent a couple of hours responding to her friends and colleagues who received an unsolicited Tubely invitation from her.  I think many would agree that Tubely is in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act. The first three rules of the CAN-SPAM Act: 1. Don’t use false or misleading header information. 2. Don’t use deceptive subject lines. 3. Identify the message as an ad. In this bloggers opinion, Tubley is repeatedly violating the CAN-SPAM Act.

Of course this is merely a legal issue. There are boatloads of ethical and professional issues too. When a company hijacks an entire address book and sends out unsolicited emails, we must be dealing with the low end of the gene pool, or perhaps in this case, the low end of the gene tube. I went to the Tubely website but the Contact Us link does not work (what a surprise). There is no phone number to call (another shocker). But after a few minutes, I was able to find a company name. Astute Software, 502, Sampada, Bangur Nagar, Goregaon (West), Mumbai – 400 090,  Maharashtra, India.

 

On the Tubely privacy policy tab, visitors are instructed to contact Astute Software at the address noted above. If they listed a phone number or email address, I would have contacted them.  What is the relationship between Astute Software and Tubely? “Astute Software specializes in offshore Development of digital solutions and software applications.” After a little research, it appears that Astute Software is the publisher of Tubely, as they advertise “Tubely free video sharing 1.0 download by Astute Software” on several sites.

After navigating to every Tubely tab, I was able to find one email. The email is: business@tubely.com. I’ll be sending Tubely an email today, and it will be clearly marked, non-viral in  nature, and candid. In this email I intend to offer my opinion of Tubely’s tactics: Tubely Viral, Tubely Spam, Tubely Unethical, Tubely Unprofessional, Tubely Spyware. Perhaps a new tagline might help Tubely; Tubely, Both Viral and Vile.