The tireless folks at KnowYourTrade.com alerted me to yet another rogue home exchange club. This evil entity is called AllHomeExchange.com. This club claims to have 21,000 members. How does a brand-new club already have more members than the two biggest legitimate swap clubs combined? From the name on my account I can tell that they must have hacked in to the member database of at least one legitimate home exchange club. They stole the names, email addresses and who-knows-what-else of these clubs' members. Then they posted the info to their site and spammed everyone whose info they stole.
I received a "trial membership" email and found I already had a listing on their site. I changed the title of my listing to say "DON'T JOIN AllHomeExchange.com it is a fraudulent club that just wants your credit card number."
Unfortunately, at least a few people have been taken in by the unscrupulous practices of these dangerous hackers. If you receive this sort of unsolicited email I urge you to take steps to protect yourself:
1) change your password on the home exchange club from which your info was stolen
2) let your club know what happened and ask how they are addressing the access problem
3) remove your listing from the rogue site
4) if anyone contacts you through the rougue site, let them know this is a scam
5) report this piracy to local or regional authories if applicable
This theft and abuse point out why we need to support established, responsible home exchange clubs that protect our privacy. It also shows that swap clubs need to put better data base and website protection in place.
Be careful out there!
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