reunion.com: legit site or malware?

Interesting little thing that happened this morning. My g/f received a request from a friend to join this site. So she clicked on it and it went through her gmail account, sending a request to all email addresses it found. It also opened up a link to an "AV online scanner" that found "3 nasties" on "her system" but when I tried to close the window, it kept insisting on trying to download an "AV software" to her system.

It's interesting how they tout that they've got 34 million members. I wonder how many were falsely led to believe to join because friends "contacted" them about it. My g/f is pissed because it sent itself out to potential work contacts and close friends.

So at the least, be aware that this is out there but I'm curious if others would view this more as malware or what?

Not sure if this would be a good idea, or against the rules, but post a link! I wouldn't mind looking at it... ( I feel your pain on the g/f deal, I spent like a hour or two cleaning up my girlfriends laptop the other day, they just click click click lol)

Here's where the "Yes" link (that is, Yes, I know this person) goes to:

http://www.reunion.com/showRegistration.pub?

I think it does the check after you've registered.

Hmmm,

I have been increasingly reading about various attacks using social networking sites as a vector, but this is a new one to me. Do you have a name for the alleged AV?

EDIT:

A quick Google turned up this:

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/doc/200...om-spam-alert/

Seems that they have been "at it" since at least May of this year? They ought to be taken down IMO as that sort of behavior is unacceptable IMO, and they can hardly plead ignorance and being owned after 3 months?

Based on the responses to that post, I'd label it malware and misrepresentation. I didn't find anything in their TOS that said they would take your address book and forward their info to everyone.

Hmmmm,

Quote:

---

I didn't find anything in their TOS that said they would take your address book and forward their info to everyone.

---

I don't think that would work legally anyways? I am pretty sure that would have to be an opt-in service rather than a default.............. and they don't give the option to opt-out?

No. Not from what I've read and not from what my g/f said she did..

I wonder what happens if you sign up as a premium member? Why is that alarm bells don't go off in peoples heads with all the crap that your asked to submit.. HOW do these get your gmail contact list without YOU giving them YOUR PASSWORD... I can understand your local addressbook but gmail etc.. as said.. click click clickity click

Hi Undies~,

I know that this sounds horrendous, but I would guess that this scumware activates when you are logged on to an e-mail account (you respond to an invitation?) and just piggybacks to it. The user would be unaware that this had happened.

I don't think that you need to give them your password, as you are already logged in and they are in essence just impersonating you? That makes it particularly insidious as the user does not seem to be prompted to do anything proactive (a polite word for stupid:D) that might warn them.

Actually, reading the blog they seem to use the openID concept and use that to get the address book. The search through Google for Reunion.com and spam seems to turn up quite a few. What I cannot figure out is why someone would pay to be part of that.

I am actually wondering if this is a single effort or some sort of combination?

From what I can see, although Reunion.com are a total shower of scumbags, I suspect that they are incompetent toe-rags to boot?

I think that their site has been owned and is probably serving drive-by infections as well. That would explain the fake security product? unless, of course, the thing is really online............... err, well the message probably is, but was there any download or any real scan?

I don't believe that Reunion would knowingly let someone try to spam fake AVs from their very own spamsite. With "40 million users"?................ seems like too good a power base to squander?

:)

As they say, there's one born every minute. The general public, from what I've seen, seems to think that if it's on the internet then it must be legit. I mean, seriously. I remember a commercial out of the US that was selling some pill that made you smarter or something. And they had a deal where you'd get the pills for free if you just paid for shipping. Well they quoted one customer as saying: "They're giving it away for free?! Well, then it must be good!".

With logic like that, can we really be surprised?!

Just a little warning, we had a user register for that site and we literally started receiving thousands of spam email messages from them, spoofing as from that user to other users. It was severe enough that we blacklisted their address space and have left it that way since.

Pretty accurate representation of what 'we' saw:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reunion.com