{"id":587,"date":"2004-03-18T12:02:32","date_gmt":"2004-03-18T06:32:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/madmanweb.com\/2004\/03\/18\/indiatimescom_i\/"},"modified":"2004-03-18T12:02:32","modified_gmt":"2004-03-18T06:32:32","slug":"indiatimescom_i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/madmanweb.com\/2004\/03\/indiatimescom_i\/","title":{"rendered":"Indiatimes.com – India’s spam champion"},"content":{"rendered":"

That wonderful Indian portal we all love, Indiatimes.com<\/a>,
\naffectionately known as Indiaslimes (and various other names<\/a>), has clearly taken some lessons in usability
\nfrom the mistakes of other mail services like Yahoo and Hotmail. Hotmail and
\nYahoo, as part of their registration process, offer you several pages of
\nnewsletters and information services that can very quickly fill your inbox with
\nunwanted junk mail. This extra step is of course an annoyance to new users. <\/p>\n

Therefore, Indiatimes has decided to make the sign-up process simpler. It
\ndoes not<\/i> ask whether you want to sign up for any newsletters. Instead, it
\ndecides by itself that you like spam and happily fills up your inbox for you. <\/p>\n

For instance, I had to sign up for an Indiaslimes account to read some crap
\non their site some time back. I never intended to use their email because I
\ndon’t need yet another email address. However, curiosity about their much-touted
\nAPIC (which deserves another blog entry of its own) led me to log in to my
\nnever-used account and see what the fuss was about. Bear in mind that I have never<\/i>
\ngiven this email address to anyone or used it for any other purpose. <\/p>\n

After logging in, this is what greets me:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Wow, so many "special offers" and all<\/b> of them from
\nIndiatimes. I really<\/i> appreciate their concern for me getting the best
\ndeal for my money. <\/p>\n

No, no, no, this isn’t "spam" at all. Most spam messages include
\nsome cheesy way of getting yourself off their "subscription" list.
\nIndiatimes, to prove that it doesn’t spam, dispenses with that completely.<\/p>\n

Here’s what one of the messages looked like:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

See? Not a single "get me off this fucking list" link anywhere.
\nSaves them the trouble of even programming the feature. That’s efficiency!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When I saw this, I wondered, "was there some fine print in the sign-up
\nscreen that subscribed me to so many damn mails?" To be sure of that, I
\ncreated a new account. Like I said earlier, the sign-up process is only one
\nscreen. And this is the screenshot of it. Do you see a "spam me
\nliberally" checkbox anywhere?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

and this<\/i> is the next screen:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Indiaslimes is fond of another method of spamming. All you have to do is give
\nIndiaslimes your email address for anything<\/i>. (For instance, if you give
\nyour real email address for posting an ad on their classifieds site.) The next
\nday, you will start getting discount coupons, "special offers", etc.
\nfrom their e-commerce group. To make it harder for you to unsubscribe, they are
\nall on different mailing lists so you have to remove yourself separately 
\nfrom each one<\/i>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Indiatimes.com – India’s #1 spammer. Richly deserving the title of IndiaSlimes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

PS: if you need an Indiatimes ID, I have created one dummy account for you.<\/p>\n

username: moronuser
\npassword: moron<\/p>\n

Enjoy!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That wonderful Indian portal we all love, Indiatimes.com, affectionately known as Indiaslimes (and various other names), has clearly taken some lessons in usability from the mistakes of other mail services like Yahoo and Hotmail. Hotmail and Yahoo, as part of their registration process, offer you several pages of newsletters and information services that can very […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/madmanweb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/madmanweb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/madmanweb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madmanweb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madmanweb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/madmanweb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/madmanweb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madmanweb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madmanweb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}