15 July 2008 @ 7:24Loopt spam debacle

Did you hear about the mess that involves Loopt.com users spamming their contact list at the expense of their recipients and without prior consent from their recipients? You need not have ever tried or even heard of Loopt in order to become a victim of their spam.

Loopt enable users to broadcast their exact location to their friends via text messages by installing the Loopt software on their mobile phone. I’m not sure I see why anyone would want to do this, but apparently there are people that want to broadcast their location. Hopefully their recipients actually give a damn.

Individuals who do experience an unwanted barrage of Looptspam from someone who was previously their friend before using Loopt can opt-out. According to Loopt:

Your friend may contact Loopt at privacy@loopt.com to request that Loopt remove this information from our systems.

Well that’s convenient, isn’t it? Email a company to stop receiving text messages that you didn’t ask for in the first place.

Merlin Mann has a more detailed post about the Loopt issue. Check it out.

Update: Loopt “[has] since disabled that functionality due to customer feedback and confusion”

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