How not to hack the growth of your Blockchain company before your ICO.

Being a blockchain funded company does not allow you to transgress the sacred rules of internet ethics

I am writing this note to avoid the pain i went trough to other users but also to make sure some of us realize the abuse our industry is going through

I am lately very much into Blockchain and i am trying lots of new services. The other day i tried a new service called Bitbounce.io (not linking to it on purpose) which is supposed to help fight spam by creating whitelist of your contacts and make “spammers” or unknown contacts pay (some bitcoin) to get to you. After all why not, Bitcoin is supposed to make the world more trustable. And since it was financed by Tim Draper himself, i told myself i should try (he funded the hotmail early…) and try to contribute to the success of this promising idea.

I registered by logging with my email account. It asked 100% read/write permission, which i found weird but was ready to play the game. Later it asked me to connect my Coinbase account in order to get paid (indeed they share what unknown contacts pay to get to you). I suspected something was wrong when they asked me the permission to be “debited” from my account (why on earth??). Anyway…i found the whole thing unconvincing. i forgot about it.

Then i suddenly started noticing weird behaviors with email which were automatically marked as read, some even hard to find.

Later some of my contacts start telling me they are receiving emails like this

my contacts get spammed in answer to their emails with this.

You read well: BitBounce automatically sends your incoming from your own email asking to pay to get your email delivered. Just like mafia. it’s for your own protection.

I got so furious to discover i was fooled, i went and interrupted my restaurant diner and connected to a poor wifi network to get my account deleted and stop this nonsense.

I logged in the site. But could not find a way to delete my account (in 2017!!). There was *no way* to do it. I deactivated, the automated notification (which funny enough is *different* from the one sent, see below and compare with above) and then my email address but also knew by experience i had to remove the app permission from my Google settings.

the setting for auto-answer (activated ON by default) is different from the one sent

Going to Google settings: impossible to find Bitbounce app. And for a good reason They don’t use this name to make it REALLY hard to delete it. By looking at their privacy policy i could find they are using a different app name called TURING. I deleted the permissions.

the real name of Bitbounce in Google settings

CEO answer: it’s fine to hack and spam. “we’re transparent about it”

That was not enough: i had to get my account deleted. I wrote to the support team and twitter account. And guess what instead of a nice apology, here is the answer i get from the CEO himself, Stewart Dennis.

and better, when i said i would file a complain to the FTC.

So for Stewart Dennis: everything is just fine. He has no idea what i am talking about. He says he s transparent about it….transparent WHERE?

*Transparent on PH*. So i happened to just know that PH is product hunt (but would you?). But i never have met them on Product Hunt. I am supposed for Stewart to have read and memorized that. But hold on.

Checking on “PH”: i realized i was not the only one to complain.

The problem was raised a month ago with a promise from the CEO himself to be fixed!

A month ago users already complained. nothing got fixed.

So in a word: Don’t mess with users because you’re hacking.

1. By signing you have a default ON activated auto answer message asking your contacts to pay in Bitcoin.
2. The company sends message on your behalf to your contacts asking you to pay, which makes it even weirder
3. They do so knowingly claiming it’s a hack you’re supposed to be aware about since your reading Product Hunt [lol]
4. They have an on-boarding which can be skipped and have no fixed so that users won t know this hack. the company knows it.
5. They have a settings no one will know how to deactivate
6. When you reach out to them they won’t apologize. the opposite they will make you like like an idiot.
7. Impossible to delete your account. There is no such features. Apparently the CEO can do it but not you…
8. Impossible to find the app to delete from Google permission
9. Arrogant CEO not even caring for recognizing his wrong doing. The opposite: putting white gloves to make it look “acceptable” because he was “transparent” about it.
10. Even if they are right, the service also does not work as advertised: they are supposed to let your known contacts through and ask the other to “pay”

And this company is supposed to be trusted to fight spam?

Listen Bitbounce. I don’t know you but in a matter of minutes you managed to piss me off big time. Being transparent about a cheap hack activated by default is NOT OK and does not entitle you to keep it on. You want to be a trusted actor in the email space: get to know the sacred rules of emails. DO NOT F…CK with users’s permissions and if you do learn how to apologize. Be humble. Your upcoming ICO does not allow you to do anything you want because you need momentum (and this is confirmation you should not participate in an ICO without trying a product if it already exists). You know it’s wrong. Enough people have told you all around. Stop this. Now.

Even the observer thinks you’re wrong

The observer talking about BitBounce

the writer of the article in The observer

I am out. Also, even if that has poor chances of success, I am also filing a complaint to the FTC as a symbol of my protest.

Tips for current Bitbounce users

1. unless you opt for account deletion (which does not exist). deactivate your email and the auto-answer feature turned on.
2. remove Turing app from Google settings
3. remove Turing/Bitcounce from Coinbase settings

And so until the service comes back to a more acceptable behavior

side note: Apologies to all my contacts who have been tricked and spammed by this. I should have been more careful. quick learning from this, if you re giving permission to an app you’re not going to use immediately kill the permission.

Update: the CEO of bitbounce,repeating the same bs justification, feels now “harassed” after his service spammed my contacts. That s too funny

No, Stewart; you’re not “Harassed”. You’re learning too much from Donald Trump here... You’re just having a crappy attitude to a user and you picked the wrong one to do so. Learn this: Repeating your “transparent” does not make your hack right. Here is the good news: the market will educate you. The voice was clear on “PH”. Fix this. Don’t be a smart ass about this. The industry needs better. Be Humble. And move on. Keep doing this and your company will have little future…

update 2: although my account is deleted since yesterday, i am still receiving this morning Unsolicited emails from Bitbounce. Oh, wait, they are transparent about it… And this company wants to fight spam!