RE: Alignable Network Alert

Search Better Business Bureau for Alignable

Here is one result:

https://www.bbb.org/us/ma/boston/profile/social-media-marketing/alignable-inc-0021-146157

We have no one named Gabby at ICIWorld and we are not inviting everyone to join Alignable.

This is a clear misrepresentation.

They are impersonating a fictitious name as if they were from our company and then inviting everyone to join their service. And what other damage can they do?

How did this happen and what can be done about it?

And what damage can they do?

Alignable appears as a networking service for business. But their methods are unscrupulous and outright fraudulent.  They make up a name and then send it to people as if it is you sending it from your company.

Some of our members thought we had a person named Gabby and they subscribed to the service Alignable because they thought we at ICIWorld were inviting them to do so. We were not!

And then the problems began.

How did this happen?

We accidentally made a mistake.

How did this happen.

Over the last several months we have been receiving invitations from other salespeople inviting us to network with them through Alignable. Each time there was a question asking us for permission to allow them to download our gmail emails. Not from the ICIWorld service which is highly protected, but one of my personal gmail accounts.

I had not accepted that request for many months.  But thought after a while it must be okay if so many were joining it, people in my CCIM Chapter, etc.

However it probably was not the salespeople that were asking me to network with them, it was Alignable, posing as that salesperson who was sending out the invitations.

When I chose to network with that salesperson, I fully did not expect they would grab my personal GMail accounts database, and then start sending out invitations to join Alignable by Gabby from ICIWorld, a fictitious name.

One of our members reports to me serious problems with his computer after signing up with Alignable.

I am sticking with Linkedin.

We have several world databases at ICIWorld, all protected, not sold or given to anyone else.

ONE SOLUTION TO PREVENT THIS PROBLEM

Make up a personal email with no others in your contacts list.

DO NOT SIGN UP FOR A PROGRAM THAT REQUESTS, BASICALLY DEMANDS ACCESS TO ALL YOUR CONTACTS IN YOUR EMAIL THEY CAN MISUSE THIS LIST IN ORDER TO BUILD THEIR DATABASE AND THEN SPAM AND MISUSE THE LIST.

This is what Alignable is doing.

I would not have clicked on the link to friend someone had I known all this.

They take all the names in your EMail program such as GMail. They literally download it immediately if you click on their link to make a friend. There is a choice to allow them to do that but if you think about it, it is not wise to give it to them.

We have company EMail databases that are protected, not shared or sold.

I have a personal EMail contacts list that are not sold and have not shared until this one instance and then it was misused instantly.

We have further security warnings of other things that can go on, on the Internet.

See https://www.iciworld.com/security

Sincerely

Gary Nusca, CCIM, CIPS

416-214-4875

PS: we are investigating if anything can be done about this.