Ringo.com -- Caution advised

I just had an e-mail from an acquaintance asking me to update his address book using Ringo.com. A few minutes later I got a worried e-mail from him.

"Dear Friends:
I am sorry to have to write this however I received an apparent e-mail from an old friend that asks for personall data. It appeared ligitimate however it started going through my mailing list automatically. The program is called RINGO and appears to be related to Yahoo and Hotmail. If you receive any e-mail with "Ringo" or "Update my Address Book" in the subject or other part of the header, delete it. Please check out this site to get a feeling of what things people are collecting on you!"

As far as I know Ringo is not related to Yahoo or Hotmail in any way.

I did not fall for it, but it was a little out of the ordinary, so I was researching it when he notified me about it.

In the meantime, do not click on any links in any e-mails having to do with Ringo.com without carefully considering the consequences (I say this circumspectfully because I don't have hard evidence that they are bad guys, but their operating mode is suspicious).

Evidently the process is rather fast and you don't have any second chances as is clear from the above worried e-mail. Of course, this outfit already has my e-mail address because they got it from my acquaintance's address book, but I don't have to help the process along, nor do I have to jeapordize the information in my address book.