Shareaholic Scammy Scammers
Hi Guys
I just wanted to share something with you incase anyone else is using the Shareaholic plugin.
I have used it for a while and have always liked it however I installed it on my new site that I am building through the WA Bootcamp and started noticing some alarming issues.
Shareaholic puts the social sharing buttons on your posts and also adds in related posts underneath, a feature I really liked until I noticed that they were adding THEIR blog posts to my related posts section, effectively stealing my readers and sending them to their site without even letting me know.
Obviously when I realised this I was annoyed and removed the plug in right away, however I did some research and the results were even more worrying. I have copied some posts below so you can read for yourself what they are up to.
I really don't know why they have gone down this path but I can't see anyone with any sense allowing them to do what they like on your website - so I thought I would send out a warning - I wont be using their stuff again!
Copied posts:
Beware -- Data Mining In Play Here
By Rongo, July 15, 2013 for WP 3.5.2
Shareaholic **used** to be a respectable plugin provider until recent updates. However, the company is now engaging in practices that, in our view, calls their integrity into question.
1. Data Mining -- "Related Content" is a real nice way of spinning "We're scraping your content, mining your blog's data and then embedding links into your posts to track everything back through our own site." Thanks for link juice, much appreciated. Sure they suggest your content that may be related, but in doing so they are redirecting everything back through their tracking service BEFORE the user reaches your content. It is important to note that you are immediately enrolled into this data mining program, as it is on by default and piggybacks onto the Social Sharing plugin itself.
2. Registration Mining -- Surfers wanting to share your content are, depending on the social network they wish to share your content on, are funneled into a Shareaholic app that requires them to register first and THEN sends them to the social network they wanted. Do you trust them to not spam your users after this?
3. Storing Data on 3rd Party Services -- rather than respecting your blog plugin's settings, and storing things on your own local database, your settings and data are now stored in a 3rd party cloud service, conveniently spun as their answer to the speed issues which plagued them. In reality, it just gives them more control over your own data, versus storing necessary files locally on your own installation and database. It's all about the data tracking.
There are a number of issues at play here, beyond the ones noted above. It's an otherwise good plugin, but the data mining at play here should be fully explained and disclosed. No doubt this is for business reasons and ultimately for advertising/investment reasons. But it's act the expense of their users' sites and content. Certainly they've lost us a long time customer.
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also....
1 star
Shareaholic is hijacking my users
By mtaus, October 17, 2013 for WP 3.6.1
I really like the UI and setup on this plugin. I think it looks elegant and it is just what I wanted for a new site that I'm launching. But after I had it installed and attempted to test a share, I was surprised to learn that SA is using my user shares to build their user registrations.
If you are using this plugin on your site, let me explain how you can test this for yourself. First, make sure that you are not logged in in to Shareaholic. Then, go back to your SA-powered site and attempt to share an article on Twitter. A popup will appear - without any SA branding - with 2 buttons to connect with Twitter or Facebook... remember, you just attempted to share with Twitter (not a unified share button). When you click connect with Twitter, you then get a Twitter OAuth screen asking you to grant permission to Shareaholic. If you are an unsavvy user this seems normal, so you authenticate/authorize and... surprise! you've just registered with Shareaholic... when all you were trying to do was share an article.
There is no need to OAuth with SA when a user is just sharing an article... except to help SA grow their user base!
Here's a screenshot: https://twitter.com/MikeTaus/statuses/390851390781665280
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and even more worrying....
Plugin adds Google Analytics code to your site
By Roger (Desertstsndard), October 17, 2013 for WP 3.6.1
Was working on my site and noticed another GA code popping up - UA-12964573-5. This is alarming as it means my sites analytics are being sent to a third party without my permission. Upon further research it appears that this code is being placed by the Shareaholic plugin without clearly identifying that this is what is happening.
I have now removed this plugin from all of my client websites and will not be using anything related to this plugin creator again. This constitutes a serious breach of privacy by the plugin creator.
There are other plugins that track information such as the Yoast SEO plugin but they do this in an Opt-In manner and further use a much less invasive approach as you can read about here - http://yoast.com/yoast-tracking/
Going whole hog and grabbing all Analytics data from a website is well beyond gaining simple insights into what version of wordpress is being used.
I see that this was brought up 2 years ago - http://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-sexybookmarks-hidden-googleanalytics-code-in-v329?replies=4 and that the response from the creator was that you can simply turn it off.
This is something that should be off by default.
Recent Comments
6
I've been using ShareAholic for quite sometime and have had no problems am I am impressed with their support team. They always promptly reply to any questions or concerns. I contacted them about the problems that have been brought up and I wish to share their response with you.
This was the letter that I sent to them:
Shareaholic **used** to be a respectable plugin provider until recent updates. However, the company is now engaging in practices that, in our view, calls their integrity into question.
1. Data Mining -- "Related Content" is a real nice way of spinning "We're scraping your content, mining your blog's data and then embedding links into your posts to track everything back through our own site." Thanks for link juice, much appreciated. Sure they suggest your content that may be related, but in doing so they are redirecting everything back through their tracking service BEFORE the user reaches your content. It is important to note that you are immediately enrolled into this data mining program, as it is on by default and piggybacks onto the Social Sharing plugin itself.
2. Registration Mining -- Surfers wanting to share your content are, depending on the social network they wish to share your content on, are funneled into a Shareaholic app that requires them to register first and THEN sends them to the social network they wanted. Do you trust them to not spam your users after this?
3. Storing Data on 3rd Party Services -- rather than respecting your blog plugin's settings, and storing things on your own local database, your settings and data are now stored in a 3rd party cloud service, conveniently spun as their answer to the speed issues which plagued them. In reality, it just gives them more control over your own data, versus storing necessary files locally on your own installation and database. It's all about the data tracking.
There are a number of issues at play here, beyond the ones noted above. It's an otherwise good plugin, but the data mining at play here should be fully explained and disclosed. No doubt this is for business reasons and ultimately for advertising/investment reasons. But it's act the expense of their users' sites and content. Certainly they've lost us a long time customer.
This was the response from Shareaholic:
shareaholi
shareaholic_helpdesk (Shareaholic Helpdesk)
Nov 19 05:03 PM (EST)
No problem, I've seen this post before, if I were to address his points:
1. Every related content link goes directly to your post url, it's not redirected through our site
e.g. http://erincooks.com/tropical-toffee/ (mouse over the recommendations to see link)
We do have impressions tracking but that's for our ads feature which is in development and can be turned off in publisher settings.
2. The only share button service we have registration for is the Twitter button, but it's turned out to be more of a hassle than anything else, so we have engineers working on a direct tweet button. Try the Facebook or Linkedin button, no registration. Also I don't think we've ever spammed anyone.
3. The only things we store in the cloud are your featured image, page title, link, and meta tags, so we can provide recommendations. There's some fancy natural language processing stuff that our engineers are working on, though it's not done yet. Honestly it's more of a testing and user convenience thing than anything.
We're a small Boston based startup of 5 engineers and 3 business dudes, just trying to make a great service for everyone, nothing nefarious.
Anyways, hopefully that's made things a bit more clear. Thanks for bringing this to our attention and please let me know if there's anything else I can help you with!
I will keep using Shareaholic unless I notice personally that there are scummy problems. At this point I don't think there is a problem using this plug-in.
Ed
OK I understand those responses but you did not include the fact that they are putting 'related content' links on my site which takes people to their blog - this is not something that I was asked permission for nor agreed to. And also the point about them adding Google Analytics code to your site without making it clear.
I think that if they want to do these things then they should be switched off by default and they should ask you permission to have then enabled. Or if they want to make their plugin commercial then they could offer a paid alternative without these links being added.
Its all about transparency the fact that they add links and code to my site without making it clear means that they have lost my trust and I wont be using them again.
Hey Nikki, thanks for a brilliant, detailed post. I'm always advising Members to be ultra careful of plugins like this, and also use themes that are responsive, not plugins or services that claim to "repurpose" for mobiles but end up hijacking traffic. Listwire is another one, it's a free autoresponder because they add their own ads and links and spam your lists behind your back. As Steve (@IveTriedThat) is always reminding me, "If you're not paying, you are the product". Rich.
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Yeah, no problems here either. You can turn off the related posts in the settings, and they only ever linked to my own posts anyway. As for twitter, it just adds a "Via @shareaholic" onto the end of your tweet, which you can delete. This is a great plugin.