[alex_sandro]

you probably all have met the situation when someone registers at certain websites, (mostly social networks) and the invitation is resent to all contacts from their mail. I would really appreciate if someone could explain how does it work. I mean, in most cases senders ar not aware of such invitation. I have received at least 10 of them from my academic supervisor

[cwwozniak]

There are scripts available that can be added to a web page that will allow the web site to import the address book contacts from the visitor's computer. Here is a link to once such application called Getmycontacts:

http://www.getmycontacts.com/

It could be possible that a web site would have an "Invite my friends" button on a member's page. The person may click on it expecting to be asked for the friend's e-mail address but the site just imports all the addresses and sends invitations. This happened to my wife a while ago when she joined a book exchange club.

[alex_sandro]

yes, but how can any script get access to the contact list when the mail account is password protected. Yahoo mail for example.

[cwwozniak]

Click the link in my earlier post and then click the link for "Works With / Try Demo". It takes you to page that asks for your e-mail address and password. And yes, there are people in this world that will freely give out this kind or private information on websites they barely know about without so much as the blink of an eye.