Wait… Didn’t Homejoy Shut down?

Remember the home-cleaning service Homejoy that shutdown in July this year? They sent me this email today telling me about their “Partner” company Fly Maids.

This is the email I got today from “Homejoy Cleaning” — Anybody else get this email?

As a co-founder of a small online service startup I was interested enough to check it out.

First, it was the much of the same content as the old Homejoy site, but a different name with an ugly default bootstrap theme. Also, they called out several large publications as if they had been featured. I did some quick googling and found they were never featured in any of the listed publications.

The bottom of the site lists these publications as if they were featured.

Worst still, as I navigated around the site I realized the email link I clicked logged me into “My Account”. This screen had my personal information, home address, email, even my credit card number.

All my personal information from my Homejoy account.

I was even more bothered when I noticed that my connection wasn’t even https. This shady email, my data being moved over, and the amateur look and feel of this site had me really annoyed.

I checked the “waybackmachine” to see if the site was literally a re-brand of the Homejoy site like I assumed it was. What I realized was much worse.

They completely ripped off the Handy homepage.

Handy was the biggest Homejoy competitor until they shut down. However Handy is still in business. This new “Fly Maids” site completely stole the exact homepage of their competitor thinking nobody would notice.

Please… This is just too much.

They even copied and pasted the testimonials.

I then checked out Homejoy’s goodbye post.

I wanted to see how up-front they were about According to Homejoy’s FAQ linked from this goodbye post they said the following:

What is going to happen to my credit card information and personal information on your website?

We have always taken every precaution to safeguard your information and will continue to do so. We set strict standards to ensure all payments are secure through a SSL-encrypted, PCI-compliant system.

My information is not stored on a SSL-encrypted PCI-compliant system. It’s on some amateur site that ripped off content and can’t be bothered to write any css. I searched and searched through my emails for any other notice from them that this expectation of basic data security would be broken and found nothing.

What will happen to my homejoy account? When will I no longer have access to it?

You will no longer have access to your Homejoy account starting August 1st.

To me this implies that my account will close. They did not explicitly say they would delete my data, however they did say they I would no longer have access. I do now. Also, it’s not SSL or PCI as promised.

Is another company going to do my cleaning moving forward?

Unfortunately, we have not been able to arrange for another company to cover your appointments. We hope that you are able to continue your relationship with your current cleaner, independently of Homejoy.

This is pretty clear to me that there isn’t going to be a third party taking over my account from Homejoy. Again, it’s not explicitly promised.

I searched everywhere for Homejoy’s previous privacy policy and I couldn’t find it.

This makes me wonder what obligation companies have to individuals data when they shut down. Are they or the next company obligated at all to destroy or store this data securely? I’m super annoyed and If you got this email you should be too. As far as I can tell this is pretty sloppy and negligent.

Did anyone else get this email?

Are you from Fly Maids? I would love to know why you think all this is cool.

I’m pretty annoyed.

Reach out to me on twitter: @johnsalzarulo

Thanks for reading! — If you aren’t on my email list you probably should be.