So, I was very curious as to why I am getting so many invites (and reminders). The reason it got me so worried was, a few months ago a number of people seemed to have been conned into giving their Orkut profile info to another desi social networking site that spammed everyone of their friends. And those emails looked just like the ones from Shelfari? And now that I know exactly what happened, I don’t think I’d be wrong if I said that most of these people who “sent” me invites did not intend to do so.

This is what i did. Instead of clicking on any of the invites that I got, I went on Shelfari.com and chose an id, password and put in my usual spam id and voila. In the next screen, I saw this.

I think most people don’t read this properly and assume that they are asked to enter their login details again. I can’t think of any other reason. And once they do so, their Google address book is open for Shelfari to farm and send out invites. But again, to Shelfari’s defense, they have provided an way out. But for that, you actually have to read what is on the page.

So if you don’t intend to hear me cursing at you next time (if at all) we talk, here’s what you do – READ the damn page! And move your mouse over every single line of text. At the bottom of the email details frame, you see this (under either bottom corner of the said frame).

And voila, if you had followed my instructions and moved your mouse over each line, you’d find that one of these two pieces of text is actually a link! How sneaky is that! Click the link and you are in Shelfari and I don’t have any reason to curse you for your stupidity either.

So there. Become a member of any damn website that you want to be a member of. Just don’t give my email address to them. If there is something that is interesting on this Web 2.0 thingy, I am on the internet long enough every day that I’d have read about it extensively on Slashdot/Boing Boing/Gizmodo/Wired first before I got any invite from any of you n00bs!