It seemed clear as day to me which would do what from just looking at the registration form. It is however reprehensible to ask a user to divulge their email password for any reason, and this is not the only site to do so by a long shot. The only difference that I can see between this and (facebook? twitter?) is that they actively spam your contact list and send you a rude (but personalized!) service email when you complain. Stupid user, for giving up her email password.
There is an upside to scumbags like this. The publicity will, hopefully, teach people to NEVER give their existing account information to another site.
Facebook & LinkedIn also ask for your email password, and they use it to spam. Whats interesting is that techcrunch never complains about it. Perhaps it is not wise to write harsh support letters to them ;-).
stupid user though.
Facebook and LinkedIn display a list of contacts from your email and allow you to select which ones to send invites (spam) to. And it is usually an optional step that can be skipped.
In my eyes, this is OK because it the page is clear about what they want and that it will email your contacts that you select.
Of course this is what I recall from when I signed up a while ago, so I could be wrong.
News like this spreads the lesson that you should never tell anyone your password, so I'm all for this being on top of every news aggregator out there.
It's a downside of using your email and password to log into sites - and obviously spacelocker does this deliberately given the number of complaints you can find on the net and their unwillingness to make their sign up clearer (or separate). Being a bit lazy, if it's a trusted site, I'm almost afraid to admit I've done it myself since it's convenient - I use my email and password to log into HN.
I think the news here is that this company sent that support email to a user. It's pretty unbelievable. In fact, I'm not sure I do believe that it's real. Would someone really write that?
I have no problem believing the same people who would design a purposefully confusing interface to spam people's contact lists would also abuse their uses through customer service.
I suspect the "support group" is one guy doing it part-time. After a few dozen identical complaints he probably gets mighty jaded, and you see the results.
I'm assuming here the "support group" can't change the main page, and whoever CAN doesn't want to.
Too bad nobody is weevil enough to sign up a few million bogus new users.
I have no clue about law, but I think there should be a law that doesn't allow "PS" and "footers" or "*" in a different font size, whether it is a website or a printed form or billboard. Their font size should be at least as big as the least other font size used in the page.
The lawyers that frame these footers don't want us to read, and so do everything possible to "help" us "ignore" these.
Yes, I too find that irritating. They do it on radio commercials too, by either using software or actors who can speak fast to rattle off the T&C. Restrictions on this tend to be regarded as an intrusion on free speech, but I'm not sure that commercial solicitations should enjoy the same protection as other kinds.
how is it intrusion? All I am saying is, if the lowest font size (other than the fineprint) in a page is 10, then the fineprint font size should be a minimum of 10.
That said, nothing stops them from adding a single line of useless info, slap the font size at 8, and add the fineprint too as 8 font size.
Something better can be thought of, but there needs to be some law. Those fineprints are read by only those damn lawyers who write them.
Oh I think your idea is entirely reasonable - but reason doesn't stop lawyers from making illogical or counterfactual arguments on behalf of their clients. You might find this very interesting - a (serious) discussion of bullshit promises in legal contracts: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1262477
