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Have you have received messages that appear to be from John Maloney saying

    Please take a moment to update your latest contact information. Your
    information is stored in my personal address book and will not be
    shared with anyone else. Plaxo is free, if you'd like to give it a try.

    Thanks,
    John Maloney
    P.S. I've attached my current information in a vcard. If you get
    Plaxo too, we'll stay in touch automatically.

I've received two so far. Interested in Plaxo? Write back to me and I'll
send you some links to places where you will see why Plaxo is a very bad
idea.

I replied to a posting John made on SOCNET and he's put me on the Plaxo
distribution system. If I respond to his request and "get Plaxo too"
(it's like getting an infectious disease -- an SNTD,
social-network-transmitted-disease), it will ask me to upload my address
book and then it will send out similar messages to everyone in it. It
doesn't just take the names and addresses -- it also takes the phone
numbers, home addresses, and whatever else is in my address book. Where
is that information stored? What does Plaxo do with it? Why do they want
to collect tens of thousands of email addresses? How do they make money?

Look at the "Reply-to" address on the messages; note that they don't go
back to John Maloney. They go to
<[log in to unmask]>

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