The Magic of Home Exchange

Dear Kath,

Hi, I'm Julia Recasens, HE 19610 and I wish to thank you for your nice website and for the fantastic work you do. I really appreciate it as a means to discover new worlds and cultures by an alternative and real way of travelling. I have some friends who have joined GTI and I keep on recommending it because I truly like it. We have had five nice exchanges and have meet friendly people everywhere. I call it the magic of the home exchange.

Today my husband received a phonecall from Chile asking for information and afterwards I found this e-mail. He answered the girl and did what he could to help. We just wanted to let you know that we are very glad to be useful in any kind of matter which involves cooperate with nice projects like this and we wondered if there is any other way in which we could help. I speak several languages and I would be very pleased to help you from here. I work as a teacher in a secondary school but I think I can offer my collaboration since it is a matter which I really trust.

All the best,
Julia

Julia, Thank you so much for your message: we do so love to receive these accolades from time to time which makes our hard work all seem worthwhile.

Rogue Home Exchange agencies don't deserve your trust!

Dear Green Theme International,

What is your policy regarding data protection?
I'm asking as another home exchange company called "All Home Exchange", contacted me directly by email and I'm curious to know who passed on my details.

Also, on that company's website, there doesn't seem to be any contact details nor a company registration number.

Thanks.
Delphine

We have also been advised that another home exchange agency's member reported: "I just wanted to let you know that the information on this site is stolen from other home exchange sites. My name and email address are used on this site (without my prior knowledge or consent) along with a photo of a someone else's house. I am guessing but it seems like all the home profiles are bogus because the details are all sketchy and the locations people desire to go are quite random."

Dear Delphine

Thank you so much for bringing the unscrupulous activities of "All Home Exchange" to our attention.

Firstly let me say, if they have obtained your details from our site and contacted you directly by email, they are acting unethically and your details must have been obtained from our site by illicit means. Our Privacy Policy is very clearly stated on the site on the page:
http://www.gti-home-exchange.com/privatepolicy.html, where you will see that we are registered with the Data Protection Registrar. Please also refer to the final two paragraphs on our Company details page:
which explains our relationship with two other agencies forming the First Home Exchange Alliance group with which we have worked for more than 18 years and who share our database. Reference to our participation within this Alliance is also made on our home page, directing you to the above quoted page for full details of the agencies within it. These are the only two other agencies from whose members you should ever receive enquiries.

The only other means by which the disreputable home exchange company "All Home Exchange" could have obtained your details from our site is if they have themselves registered as a 'pseudo' member in order to have access to the contact details of our members. In order to avoid this type of fraudulent behaviour we have recently carried out a further very detailed upgrade on the site with the sole purpose of increasing member security. The details of this security upgrade are as follows:

"The following recent changes in the Member Admin area have been made to incorporate a site based messaging system for initial contact with other members so that member email addresses are no longer displayed on listings in order to provide members with added security. This allows you to decide when you wish to disclose your own direct email address to another member for further communications.

Site based messages between members

For your security, and to protect your privacy, all contact with other
members is now done from your member area. Your sent and received messages are stored there in folders (Inbox and Sent messages). Your on-going correspondence with each member is stored separately for easy reference. Please note: as all contact information you entered on your form (email, phone, fax, mailing address) is hidden, you choose when you are ready to provide contact details to another member.

New message alerts by email

Whenever there is a new message for you (a reply to a message you sent or a message from another member), you will receive a brief email in your own email box, with the subject line, New Home Exchange message for you from HEXXXXX, to alert you to log on to your member area to read and reply to the message.

A few new message alerts may end up in junk folders by mistake and so it is important to skim through all mail in your junk folder before deleting it if possible. It's tedious but, until there are better filters that can sort all legitimate messages from the masses of unsolicited mail, there may be a few 'good' messages that need to be rescued from your junk folder and moved to your in-box. If you can't check through your junk folder, be sure to log on to your member area regularly to check and read any recent messages you may have overlooked.

Please note: if you change your email address, remember to log on and change it in your listing (Edit personal details) so that you continue to receive alerts when you have new messages from other members.

Home exchange offer messages

When first contacting a member with your exchange offer, use the form at the bottom of the member's listing. If you have compiled a standard exchange offer message and saved it on your computer, you can copy and paste it into the form and then personalise the message before sending. The subject line is already completed and includes your User ID so the member can easily find your listing. When you have finished your message, click Submit. As soon as your message has been sent, you will see the member's User ID under the Recently contacted list in your member area. You can save a record of up to 20 messages sent at a time and delete any you don't want to keep by clicking the 'x' beside it."

As you will see from the above details, we take the matter of Member Privacy and Security extremely seriously, but at the end of the day if an unethical home exchange agency is prepared to go to such lengths to try to poach other
agencies' members, probably one of the most effective things which we can do to deter them is to Name and Shame Them, and this we do by
confidentially circulating information about such an agency's activities amongst a large group of long established and respected home exchange agencies who are voluntarily working together to eliminate and expose the activities of a small number of dubious agencies which could spoil the concept of home exchange and its reliance on mutual trust for all.

Unfortunately, you have not given me your own Membership User ID: HEXXXXX which would help me to follow up my investigation about All Home Exchange, and their ability to be able to contact you direct by email. It would also assist me with my enquiries if you could send details of the email address from which All Home Exchange sent their contact message to you.

If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to ask them, and please continue to be vigilant and report to us any other similar unsolicited suspicious contacts.

Kath Botterill

Dear Kath,

It actually dawned on me this morning that the rogue company All Home Exchange must have got hold of my details and this other lady's details through another website than your company or others within the FHEA. I re-read Home Base Holiday's reply to her that she forwarded me, and she's in fact not a member. As for me, although I'm a member of GTI, last July I registered with 2 other free home exchange programmes on Google France (/Le guide du routard/ and /Bienvenue à la maison/) that I've never used nor checked, and that I had completely forgotten about, and I'm now sure the leak comes from them.

The reason why I wrote to you first is that I use your website a lot, and I had just literally completed the first part of a non-simultaneous exchange through your website when All Home Exchange contacted me. So I thought that somehow, because I had actually exchanged, I qualified to be on some kind of bigger network. Also, the names being so similar, I sadly fell into the trap thinking it was all the same group.So, although this story could happen to other members of GTI also registered elsewhere, I
don't think you need to worry about the security of your system. As you said yourself, you've endeavoured to make it very secure.

I like your website a lot, for this very reason. Sorry to have caused undue alarm, I'll delete my details from these 2 websites I have mentioned.
Thanks,
Delphine

WARNING - Please be on the alert should you receive the All Home Exchange agency offer shown below:

Free membership is only offered to world experienced home exchangers.

How to get FREE trial membership?

● 1 year free membership if you would update your house information in 1 week since today;

● 1/2 years membership if you would update it in 2 weeks;

● 3 months trial membership if you would update it in 1 month.

Features of this site:

●Largest database in the world now, 21,000 + listings. which will highly increase the match rate and more unexpected exciting offers. (As a new agency it is highly unrealistic that All Home Exchange could have attracted so many members in such a short time by legitimate means.

Anyone who inadvertently registers with them is able to delete their details from their website, although they cannot delete the record of the membership which is part of their scam!)

As some Green Theme International Home Exchange members have been targetted, I have added a warning to the member area to not respond to an invitation to join this agency (or any other that sends unsolicited, i.e. spam, messages). Also, should you receive any exchange offers that seem to come from members of this site, don't respond but rather forward the offer message to us.

Once again, thanks to the vigilant GTI Home Exchange member and other individuals for reporting this. When a free offer looks too good to be true, it usually is!