Frienditto

[rm]

From several of my friends -- all of this is via them, as I've had NO DIRECT CONTACT WITH THE SITE, but feel this meritted enough concern to repost here:

Watch out for Frienditto.

This site is an archive service that claims affiliation with Live Journal BUT DOES NOT HAVE IT.

There has been some concern over this site and security of LJ accounts. If you provide it with your login information for your Live Journal you give this service permission to archive your friends only entries and ANY locked entries of your friends for which you have access.

Please read the following answer to my support request regarding this site and be informed. More importantly, inform others.

Dear user,

Frienditto is not affiliated with LiveJournal in any way. As such, this website does not have access to any entries which are not publicly viewable. If someone provides them with their LiveJournal username and password, however, it gives this site access to all non-public entries that account would have access to. We can only recommend that you do not provide your username and password to any person or website to ensure the security of your account.

Additionally, if you believe anyone on your Friends list may have provided their login information to this website, we can only advise that you remove them from your Friends list. This website will have access to your Friends-only entries as long as any person on your Friends list has given the site access. If any content is present on Frienditto which you do not wish to be there, you will need to resolve the issue with that website.

Regards,

Scott
LiveJournal Abuse Team

(Emphasis mine)


If you are using this site I will remove you from my friends list. Additionally, I will be extraordinarily cross at you, either for being an idiot, or a malicious little freak.

Comments

[zarq.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's just great. :(

(No, I'm not using it. Now I have to go and ask my f-list.)

[niralth.livejournal.com]

cutest
avatar
ever

[annablume.livejournal.com]

Charming. Not using the site.

[delchi.livejournal.com]

Not I said the Infosec warrior.

I would think that its obvious to anyone that giving away their LJ id/pw grants access to everything , but then again common sense is not all that common.

[eqe.livejournal.com]

No kidding. Even people who're supposedly smart, like Joi Ito (http://joi.ito.com/archives/2005/02/03/apologies_for_spamming_friends_with_smsac.html), apparently have no problem typing their username and password into a website merely based on an email that appears to be from someone they know.

I shake my head over humanity, I really do.

[ladyofthelog.livejournal.com]

That's really scary. Eep.

*hides from Frienditto*

ugh

[dancing-moon.livejournal.com]

Came from friend-of-friend or something like that...

Copying this, if you don't mind. Will give link!

Re: ugh

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I'm doing the same. Holy cow. Learned of this through wired_lizard.

Icarus

[roadnotes.livejournal.com]

Bleagh. Have linked and asked the question on my LJ, too.

[lanthinel.livejournal.com]

One of my other friends noted this earlier, and I shared this post with them re: your feedback from lj-abuse.

It's spring, so obvously the asshats are in bloom..

[labellerose.livejournal.com]

Oh Gawd. Thanks for the heads up on this! What's their purpose?
To increase the amount of angst & wank in the universe?

Um, thanks awfully, frienditto, but I've had enough.

[33mhz.livejournal.com]

If you think that it claims to have LJ affiliations, your reading comprehension could use a brush-up.

[subbes]

Most of the points made in this entry are untrue and could be checked by looking at the frienditto site.

[hep.livejournal.com]

FEAR! UNREST! DRAMA! LJ PETITIONS AND COLORBARS!

[jameth.livejournal.com]

Where does Frienditto claim to have affiliations with LiveJournal?

[rfjason.livejournal.com]

IT'S A CONSPIRACY! FRIENDITTO WILL STEAL YOUR PASSWORD AND GIVE YOU INTERNET AIDS.

[hawksley.livejournal.com]

you'd be pretty stupid to assume that frienditto and lj are affiliated in ANYTHING of any sort.

common sense, kids.

-s

Confirm/Deny

[old-age.livejournal.com]

You are a M2F, post-op.

Re: Confirm/Deny

[greeneyedsarah.livejournal.com]

no answer from rm = confirm.

[sandstar.livejournal.com]

HTTP Error 403 - Forbidden
Internet Explorer

As of now...

Would like to post your post in my journal, if O.K...

[jameth.livejournal.com]

We will be back in 2 hours. We are doing maintenance to accomimodate the increased traffic. Also we are not affiliated with livejournal in any way shape or form."

[rfjason.livejournal.com]

RETARD ALERT!

[whomajigi.livejournal.com]

Good god, this is the umpteenth time I've seen you on a place I've visited (unless people are stealing your icon--which I HIGHLY doubt). Do you EVER post anything positive? Are you just sitting at home all day looking for people to make obnoxious comments at?

(And to the main comment thingy, I wish LJ could/would do something about this. I don't feel comfortable at ALL with the idea of my locked posts being viewable. (Most of the people on my list I know in person. And if I took them off--woo, drama! :P)

[auntiesiannan.livejournal.com]

Uh.

When did you get the bizarro idea that anything you put online is private?

Other than that, your dispensing of misinformation in this post is hilarious. FD does not claim any connection with LJ. No one needs your password to post your friends-only entries. Information is not cached by FD.

And FD will never delete anything that has been posted to them, so don't bother trying.

[uozaki.livejournal.com]

If nobody needs your password to post FO entries, why do they ask for it?

[dgt2.livejournal.com]

I used Frienditto once and jameth and girlvinyl gained unauthorized access to my password and computer. They now have my personal information and stole $500 from me.

[girlvinyl.livejournal.com]

omg
SUCH A COFFEE
I am laughing so hard right now.
HAHAAHAAAAAAAAaa

[karnythia.livejournal.com]

I posted a link to this, thanks for the info. The site still strikes me as being dodgy as fuck.

[auntiesiannan.livejournal.com]

Thank you for spreading disinformation. Please continue to do so, the Revolution depends on lackeys like you.

[alexpgp.livejournal.com]

I do not use the site.

(Give out my LJ login info? Pardon?)

Good for you for highlighting this!

Cheers...

[magicmitsuki.livejournal.com]

You don't have to provide your username and password to save public entries to frienditto.

Anyone who wants to make their private post public can simply unlock it, or post it again, publicly.

Anyone wishing to be malicious can simply copy and paste the private entry into their own journal.

Anyone who is an asshole enough to frienditto a private post which is not their own... deserves whatever problems they get from doing it.

So... what's the big deal?

It's not Frienditto's fault, the REAL SOLUTION IS:

Pay attention and becareful of what individual people you add onto your f-list

Any and all problems are your own fault, not friendittos.

[(Anonymous)]

The big deal, seems to me, is that while yes, anything you put on the internet isn't REALLY private, and yes, friends with access to flocked posts can easily do any number of other things that they do to blab their mouth about things that their friends TRUSTED they would keep between them...

But with all the other 'methods' of capturing a flocked entry, you still had to have some way to identify yourself, be it in where you host it etc...and it was harder to hide your identity that you were the sleazefucker that betrayed someone's trust.

Now, friendittos takes away all that and makes it easy as pie to betray trust that is bestowed.

Options? Environment of distrust. Don't flock anything. If you have something you need to vent, keep it offline. And now...everyone will be looking over their shoulder at people they previously trusted (as much as one can trust on the internet) and wonder who it was that decided their business should be made known to others.

*shrug* It's a shame. Will we go now from an easy going community spirit of friends, acquaintences and people who got along to now mistrust of everyone you come across.

Not the healthy mistrust that everyone should invoke but the paranoid mistrust that everyone is going to tell your private business out to the rest of your flist.

Small potatos in the grand scheme of things but this air of encouraging betrayal with no consequences that affect the betrayer (after all, it's anonymous, right?)...the betrayer has nothing to lose, while those they betray, have everything to lose.

just in case anyone wants to peruse it- their 'legal policy':

[(Anonymous)]

FRIENDITTO LEGAL POLICY

1. Statement
Use of the Frienditto.com website implies agreement, understanding and compliance with all the following outlined policies and terms.
Frienditto reserves the right to make any change to this document at any time without notice.
2. Indemnity
You agree to indemnify and hold Frienditto.com, and its subsidiaries, affiliates, officers, agents, co-branders or other partners, and employees, harmless from any alleged claim or demand, including reasonable attorney fees, made by any third party due to or arising out of your Content, your use of the Service, your connection to the Service, your violation of the TOS, or your violation of any rights of another, whether you are a registered user or not. The user is solely responsible for his or her actions when using the Service, including, but not limited to, costs incurred for Internet access.
3. Termination
The Service reserves the right to terminate at any time, at its sole discretion any usernames, passwords, entries, accounts, and access to its site without notice, for any reason. You agree not to hold the Service liable for any termination or any exercise of this right.
4. Editing Privileges
The Service reserves the right to modify, change, addend, delete, or in any other way alter any entry to its site or page for whatever reason without notice, at its sole discretion.
5. Compliance with COPPA
By use of this site, you agree that you are at least 18 years of age. This site may contain adult content.
6. Copyright infringement
The Service does not make any claim to copyright for any of the user entries submitted and will immediately remove any content with a proper request from the copyright owner. Users of the Service agree that at the time of submission they have proper permissions from the copyright owner. Frienditto does maintain copyright to all pages that it creates or generates, exclusive of the archived entry content.
7. Privacy Policy
While the Service makes every effort to maintain total and complete confidentiality with regards to its sites, users, database, and other material and intellectual property, Frienditto must, by law, comply with legal requests from authorities, such as subpoena or warrant. Under no other circumstances will information be released.
8. User Conduct
While using the Service, you agree not to engage in any criminal, threatening, harassing or indecent behavior. Violation of this clause may result in immediate termination of access.
9. Violations and Grievances

To report any violations of this agreement or to file a grievance, please contact the administrator at legalthreats@frienditto.com. We will make every effort to get to your report or request in a timely fashion. Plz to be advised that any information sent to this email address other than legal threats will be ignored. Please do not make repeated submissions, as this will generally not expedite the handling of your report or request.
10. Correspondence with Frienditto

Should you choose to present your e-mail address, physical home address, telephone number, full name or other personally identifying information to Frienditto by any means whatsoever, we reserve the right to publish said personal information in whole or in part. Should you chose to contact any member of Frienditto.com by any communication means, Frienditto reserves the right to publish the conversation, in whole or in part, as seen fit to do so. Any and all e-mails may also be published in whole or in part. By communicating with Frienditto.com staff, you consent to said publication and acknowledge you have no expectation of privacy whatsoever under federal or state law for materials discussed and/or submitted. Legally privledged materials and communication, and/or communication concerning an active ongoing law enforcement investigation will be kept confidential as required by law.

Re: just in case anyone wants to peruse it- their 'legal policy':

[metaphorge.livejournal.com]

Interesting.

Gonna Link..

[mystrys.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the heads up on this :)! -Mystrys

[sine.livejournal.com]

fascinating how all the abusive people in this thread have links to the lj drama community (which itself seems to be connected to the same people who run frienditto).

and by telling people that if they're on my friends list and using frienditto, i am getting rid of people who'd a. be dumb enough to give a bunch ofkids their lj password, b. stupidly sign up for a service run by people whose idea of intelligent debate is pathetic attempts at ridicule, and c. be untrustworthy enough not to be trusted with anything i want private.

no one's asking for you guys to be shut down. create all the drama that you want. some of us are not willing to be a party to it, that's all.

[coven.livejournal.com]

I'm not using the site...I didn't even know of its existence till now. I am still unsure about the actual purpose of that site, tbh.
Also, how would I know if anybody in my friend list is using that site?

oops

[coven.livejournal.com]

Sorry, i left the comment in the wrong lj...