Harvests admin email directly from WP without permission

Did you contact [email protected] as suggested in the plugin’s FAQ?

@esmi , no point contacting anyone. It is time to go straight to the government!

harvesting emails and then not even offering an option to opt-out in the mailouts is ILLEGAL. Full stop!

WordPress should REMOVE this plugin from the repository forthwith as they are a threat to our community!

Can you clarify exactly where in the plugin’s scripts this email harvesting is happening? Did you join the ShareThis Network?

@esmi, I am not a coder so would not know.

Here are the facts I do know:

1. We installed the plugin on our site
2. We NEVER supplied any email address voluntarily to the company behind it
3. An email was received to the address setup on WP as the admin email.
4. See this link for screenshot of the email received
5. The email had no option to unsubscribe or opt-out from receiving future communication or to have the email address removed from the database.
6. This constitutes SPAM under current federal legislation in both the US and Australia (where we are based).

As per my previous comment, this plugin should be BANNED from the repository!

I am not a coder so would not know

So it would be fair to say that you simply assumed that the plugin was the culprit, yes? I have had a look at the plugin’s code and I cannot find anything in the plugin that sends information back to anyone.

Did you set up an account on https://www.sharethis.com/account ?

@esmi no, we NEVER setup any accounts with ShareThis and definitely never provided them with the email address setup on WordPress.

We never setup the account because after installing the plugin we read the reviews on here (for example this one) and decided to remove the plugin and use something else instead.

Maybe that’s why we received this email but either way, how could they have sent it to us if we NEVER provided them with an email address voluntarily?

This behaviour is a clear breach of the US CAN-SPAM act of 2003 and therefore we intend to report this to the FTC which is the designated enforcement agency under the act.

I cannot find anything in the plugin that sends information back to anyone.

ginmi: “It is time to go straight to the government!”

You make me laugh…… :))) Ever heard of NSA? The US government is the father of all spying and stuff. Who do you think will listen to you?

Seems like espionage is a new fashion these days…