Apparently Excessica (you remember them, they’re the publishers who promise “to publish stuff other publishers wont” i.e taboo stories involving incest, Daddy/daughter play, etc) are spamming soliciting readers via Bebo.com.

A concerned reader sent me this e-mail:

Hey Karen, I checked my gmail this morning to find this message in my inbox. I think I’ve visited this publisher (Excissica) once when you did a blog post on them a little while back. But I certainly never gave them my email address or any other information, just browsed around a bit, and I’ve never heard of this bebo.com.

I know your blog requires an email address in order to leave a comment, but IIRC, I took one look at the Excissica thread and said “Not touching that with a ten-foot pole”. …

I’d like to know 1. if anyone else has gotten this unsolicited “invitation” and if they’re regular commenters on your blog (I read every day, but only chime in occasionally) and 2. if they collected my email when I visited their site (which isn’t possible as far as I know) or if they’re scouring your blog for email addresses (do they show up in comments? I didn’t think so). Oh, and if they’ve collected info from commenters on other blogs, if that is indeed what they’re doing.

This is the e-mail that the above reader received:

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Excessica Publishing
Date: Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 10:55 AM
Subject: New invitation from Excessica Publishing
To: —@gmail.com

You have been invited to connect as friends with Excessica Publishing

Please accept or reject this invitation by clicking below:
http://www.bebo.com/in/6483185013a144877234b134

…………………………………………………………….
Please do not reply directly to this email.

This email was sent to you at the direct request of Excessica Publishing
. You have not been added to a mailing list.

If you would prefer not to receive invitations from ANY Bebo members please click here – http://www.bebo.com/unsub/6483185013a144877234

Bebo, Inc., 795 Folsom St, 6th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94107, USA.

So, have any of you had this e-mail, or was this just a one-off?