A simple — but unacceptable — Terms of Service

Does this little bird seem sad because of the VIPFollowers.com and MoreFollowers.net TOS?

Over the last few days, there have occasionally been tweets appearing in my Twitterstream that said:

I just become a member of this AWESOME site that gets you TONS of followers: http://morefollowers.net

Eventually, I started reading Tweets from some terrific social media folks (people who welcome new followers the old-fashioned way – by earning them) that they planned to unfollow people making those kind of tweets.

But a major problem with this strategy was that many of those "annoying tweets" were going out without the knowledge of the person sending them.

It happened to me.

I'm not seeking new followers, but in the interest of education (i.e., I'm willing to take a hit early on so that you don't have to later), I had gone to the site to check it out.

MoreFollowers.net asked for a Twitter account name and password — which is not unusual for some services — which I entered and and checked "Yes" to the Terms of Service (TOS) without reading it, thinking that the site would give me a report on potential followers — as many sites do.

Most of us probably stopped reading Terms of Service because they are so complicated and full of legalese. Not smart, perhaps, but understandable. Who among us hasn't done that?

So what happened? The MoreFollowers.net automatically tweet the same message from my account that I had seen from others. That surprised me. I hadn't, to my knowledge, given it permission to do so.

And it kept on sending the same message at intervals. That surprised me even more.

Thanks to Twitter buddy @martinhofer (a prince of a guy for notifying me promptly!), I was notified of multiple postings to my Twitterstream:

It seems it does that even more than just once. There are at least three such messages in your timeline: 22 minutes, 1 hour and 11 hours ago

And, around the same time, I also noted that another person I respect in social media and PR seemed to have also  fallen victim to the MoreFollowers.net TOS because the same kind of tweets were getting posted to his Facebook status.

So I went back and had a careful look at the MoreFollowers.net TOS and discovered a TOS based on a ounter-productive methodology for attracting followers.  It is quite simple and straightforward. (On the MoreFollowers.net site, it is labeled as the TOS for FollowAdd.net, a site that doesn't seem to exist.)

Read 'em and weep:

1. You agree to submit your twitter accout [sic] credentials.

2. You agree to allow us to store your account information in our database.

3. You agree your account will be used to automatically tweet an update on your account for promotional purposes every 6 hours with the exception of VIP members.

4. You agree upon loging in [sic] you allow us tweet an update on your twitter for promotion.

5. You agree when buying vip [sic] there are no refunds or returns what so ever.

6. You agree to allow us up to 6 hours to put your twitter user name [sic] on the vip [sic] section.

7. You agree if you spam our site you will be banned from our service forever with out [sic] hesitation.

Sspamming my own followers to provide fodder for MoreFollowers.net is not my idea of a good social media business model.

I immediately changed my Twitter password to block future spamming. Then I tried to find a way to cancel my "account".

At the bottom of the page was a link to "Opt-Out" which led to a page that said:

If you would like to close or optout from MoreFollowers.net Please enter your username and password that you signed up with. If you don't remember your information it is the same as your twitter information.

So I entered my information again, which lead to ANOTHER page that said:

Hello TWITTERNAME[,] optout by clicking the link below.

Click here to optout/close account

When you "click here", you are presented with a pop-up box that says:

http://morefollowers.net

Are you sure you want to delete your account ?

Finally, after clicking through this, I was presented with a screen that informed me:

Your [sic] no longer a member at FollowAdd.net[.] [T]he tweets will stop as well as the followers. Your [sic] more then welcome to join us again. Purchase vip for 400-1500 followers a day and tweets do not apply to vip members.

I said "yes" and they tweeted this on my "behalf".

I have closed my account at this site that gets you followers: http://morefollowers.net

Then — THREE MINUTES LATER — they again sent a tweet from my account:

I just become a member of this AWESOME site that gets you TONS of followers: http://morefollowers.net

I had already unsubscribed TWICE from the service — and they kept sending out tweets!

In their F.A.Q., they claim:

Q: Is my account info stored?
A: Yes, We will not sale [sic], distribute, or harm your account in any way. It's totally safe.

I guess that my understanding of the harm of spamming my followers versus their understanding of the same must differ.

I kept digging deeper. There is no indication of who owns the site or where they are located except for WHOIS, which reports that the servers are in China. The disclaimer for the site is interesting and names yet a THIRD site involved in this:

Our site does not phish accounts, any content on this site may not be 100% percent accurate. By using this site you agree VIPFollowers.com is not to be mentioned or involved with any legal matters.

I tried to find a way to directly complain to the MoreFollowers.net, but the Contact link did not work, although there seems to be a contact link on VIPFollowers.com — which, I might add, also has a spiffier site. At this point, I'm not sure I even want to submit anything because then they'll have my email address, too.

However, if I can find a way to complain — for example —  by sending an email to them every six hours (see TOS #3), will VIPFollowers.com / MoreFollowers.net / FollowAdd.net consider it spam and ban me from their service forever (see TOS #7).

I can only hope…

…because this is not a way that I — or many other people — want to get followers.

For good measure, VIPFollowers.com includes an email address of VipFollowers@gmail.com, in case anyone wants to make them an offer for their idea/script.

No, thanks. I'll pass.

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• Finding a Job in International Education
• Why I am ashamed of some social media leaders today

Tagged as: China, E-mail spam, Facebook, Facebook Inc, FollowAdd.net, MoreFollowers.net, Online social networking, prince, Religion/Belief, Social Media, social media business model, Spam, spamming, spiffier site, terrific social media folks, Twitter, Twitter Inc, VIP, VipFollowers@gmail.com, Web 2.0