I had never even heard of Grouply until late August 2008 and now I wish I had never heard of it. Some innocent member of the Hermit Crab Yahoo Group signed up for Grouply and unleashed it’s greasy tentacles all over our group. I began reading some other stories and it became apparent that getting rid of this mess rivals the worst viruses I have encountered.

Meanwhile Grouply is claiming they are misunderstood. What seems to have been intended as another way to enjoy the social web, has turned into a security breach. Once you turn over your Yahoo log in and password to Grouply (YES THEY EXPECT YOU TO GIVE THEM YOUR PASSWORD) it overrides all of your yahoo settings. From there is will create posts using your account and will contact other members with your account. Do you see the virus resemblance yet? Next it helps itself to all the files, photos and messages in your group and publishes them for the world to see and access. Better hope that if you are a member of a PRIVATE group that one of the members doesn’t decide to give Grouply a go.

I asked Ladybug (Our Hermies Group manager) to give me a run down of her battles with Grouply prior to contacting me about it for further help. I did find a way for the owner of a Yahoo group to OPT OUT of Grouply but as it’s only been about 10 days I’m not calling that a success just yet.

It started out that the Hermies Group member who joined Grouply did send some invites OR Grouply sent them on her behalf logged in to her account. Several members reported receiving the invites, Ladybug included. She said they were clearly from the member’s email address. They just deleted them.

Next Grouply began masking itself as the Hermie Group and began sending out invites via email to the members from the Hermie group email account. After getting scads of these invites forwarded to her from other members, Ladybug banned the member who joined Grouply. This doesn’t stop Grouply from accessing the group though, you have to change the users password to lock Grouply out…supposedly.

Ladybug contacted the member and asked her to change her pw to lock Grouply out. She did so but then somehow Grouply used her secondary email account (attached to her Yahoo account) to continue accessing our group and sending out invites. Remember the user herself at this point is BANNED and has no access to the group.

Ladybug contacted Grouply owner Mark and was told that Grouply did not send those messages out. That the member just didn’t realize she was the one doing it. This is total bullshit because they were sent via the web site (you can track this in Yahoo Groups), from the hermiesgroup email address and there were dozens sent in a two minute time frame. How would a member accidentally do this and be completely unaware of?

Grouply is the bane of Yahoo Groups in my opinion. This level is an annoyance. For a private Yahoo Group it becomes much more damaging as your privacy is invaded and your messages, posts etc all become public via Grouply.

Apparently this has been going on since February 2008.

Get yourself over and opt out of Grouply ASAP:
http://blog.grouply.com/owners/