FanBox Is The New Plaxo

So much facebook feel to the site…

Thanks for this article..I am also a victim..

careful with fanbox…sms.ac was a sketchy company and what fanbox does may compromise your security.

it touts itself as your computer from anywhere, then uses your username/password to automatically log you in, but that is how it gets more emails and it then spams all your contacts.

very insecure.

They keep sending me emails (I have my email address published on my blog). I usually get the question of “Is a picture really worth a thousand words?” though. It always uses my blog name instead of my real name too.

I heard about this site a while ago, good thing I didn’t sign up. I hate facebook emails so I can only imagine the hatred that would infuse me if I signed up.

Thanks for the warning

It is amazing these guys are still around. SMS.ac was such a big spammer. I guess sadly it must work a little, because they are still at it after years of doing this.

SMS.ac is a sham company, I interviewed there a year ago. They were totally disorganized, the place is a sweatshop. They expect employees to work atleast 60 - 70 hrs (yep they serve you pizza lunches and dinners).

They did not re-imburse my travel expenses, infact the never replied to my emails after the interview

Great. Is it secure? I’ve been told to stay away from Plaxo with a ten foot poll. I would look it up on their website but I am forced to check out their screenshot instead of getting the valid information that everyone else offers on a site when they are actually trying to sell something.

IIRC, Robert Scoble received a cease and desist for telling bad things about sms.ac in the past… May be you’ll receive one soon too

SMS.ac is always on the border of getting their accounts terminated by phone companies. They are a scam, like most SMS services, but I will give SMS.ac this…they are cream of the crop when it comes to mass SMS spam.

hats off

I too am a victim of SpamBox errr FanBox. Out of no where I started getting these emails and started reporting them as spam in Gmail but to no avail they kept on coming so now I have filters that just sends them to the trash.

Why isn’t this company being reported to the CAN-SPAM group? I’m sure they are but still the amount in fines would probably send them down quickly.

I got spammed by them, and it seems that I somehow had an account on fanbox.com already created for me! When I emailed them, they promptly emailed me back to let me know they are deleting my account and blocking me from getting further emails from them. So far so good…let’s see if if lasts.

I wish I had read this article before..

SMS.ac is one of the worst (and one of the first) address book spamming companies.

FanBox is just more of the same bad behavior we’ve always seen from SMS.ac. Plaxo may have dabbled in Address Book “invitations” briefly, but I’m think SMS.ac was at it long before Plaxo.

I second Aaron, I too interviewed with them in San Diego. Total sweatshop.

They do have employees who scan the blogosphere daily for any mentioning of the company name and post “positive” comments. So just give it couple of hours and they will be posting on here.

L. ron Hubbard is jealous at how effective sms.ac/fanbox.com is…

groovy?

This type of spam practice should not be tolerated. All of you receiving unsolicited mail need to report it to the FTC, so they can take legal action against this company. There are hefty fines for such business practices. Personally, I am tired of hearing about this company and can’t wait for the Feds to shut them down one day.

http://www.ftc.gov/spam/

I had filled out a form on sms.ac several years ago after reading an article that they were looking for developers to partner with them for development of mobile applications. It seemed shady, so I didn’t pursue it further. I started receiving the spam a couple of weeks ago. I would go to my “account” and mark it as disabled, but a week later, I would receive another spam and see that my “account” was marked as active. Thanks for covering these guys….

SMS.AC is a SCAM! They are crooks. Their CEO was found guilty of mail fraud in the early 90’s. These guys are at it again, and it’s the same scam as before!

http://joi.ito.com/archives/20.....smsac.html

http://www.google.com/search?q=sms.ac%20scam

Oh, this looks like web 1.0 time — really old and annoying method.

As an ex sms.ac cult-member, I feel compelled to let everyone know that the company is rotten to the core and should not be trusted. They have a system of sending premium sms message spam from fake users to in order to keep the lights on and will screw their users the first opportunity they get.

stay away.

SMS.ac is run by a bunch of crooks. Their CEO Mike Pousti has been convicted of mail fraud.
http://www.usps.com/judicial/1990deci/err-1.htm

They have been fined by UK Mobile regulators for mobile billing fraud.
http://www.smstextnews.com/200.....lator.html

They have a team of junior interns who generate “we’re all happy”messages on all the websites that speak the truth about them. Its a massive cover-up.

They generate fake SMS traffic to cause users to respond and thus incur more costs, for which they get a share of the Service Provider revenue.

They play SMS termination games with the international wireless service providers, always running from one to the next as their bills pile up.

They use lawyers to hide the truth because most people have neither the time,the money, nor the inclination to fight them.
http://thomashawk.com/2006/02/.....yahoo.html

These guys are rotten to the core. Someone needs to stand up to them and expose them for what they are. TechCrunch???

Say no more, having been cut off by multiple service provider in multiple countries for on-going abuses of the local mobile guidelines over the years, they somehow continue to bump along.

Yep its all true - SMS.ac have been know as spammers for years and continue to be.

Yeah,
A while ago some kid that worked at sms.ac spammed a bunch of UCSD computer science majors via Facebook that encouraged “joining our Developer Network and making cash on your applications.”

Now, his “work info” seems to sum them up:

Employer: SMS.ac
Position: [redacted]
Time Period: [redacted 6 month span]
Description: Doing a bunch of bullshit that really doesn’t amount to much and that there is no market for in the world. Oh, and making senior management very rich while working my ass off.

I was signed up with them at one point (social networking had just taken off and I followed invites to three or four different sites that I never used again) and got exactly one text message per day purporting to be from a 20-something girl who wanted to talk to me. As pathetic as Facebook may be, at least all the friend requests I get from them are real people whom I genuinely know, and not people invented by the site in the hope I’m lonely and stupid enough to mistake them for real.

And for the avoidance of doubt, if the firm of Sue, Grabbit and Runne are watching: yes, the company you represent are a bunch of thinly-disguised spammers preying on the sad.

The social network WhereAreYouNow.com (”WAYN”) does something like this, too. A friend of mine signed up there and promptly never used it, but about once a year I would get an e-mail from WAYN that would say “so-and-so wants to be your friend” or “so-and-so has sent you a private message” (even though I had no account) and it would always tell me to register to see the message / become a friend / etc. Well, after noticing that after 2 years my friend’s profile had never changed (and was apparently asking me to register or sending me messages or…), I asked her about it and she said she hadn’t even visited there in that long. Mystery solved.

I really don’t think that we need a webdesktop (within a browser)… now, having our desktop somehow integrated with an online source is a different story… but I don’t want to have to see my desktop through a browser.

more of my input here: http://chide.it/post/50/

It appears their latest method for harvesting emails is trolling craigslist.

I got one of the “asked you a question” spams today — sent to an email address that I only use to respond to job listings on craigslist.

I too went in for an interview and found it to be a really tough crowd to join. They make it clear that the vast majority of people hired dont make it a year, given how tough their projects are.

Actually, for a bunch of spammers they seem to have amassed one of the most interesting web 2.0 products I have seen — meebo (IM) meets webdesktop meets soc net (like facebook w/ developer APIs) meets thousands of installed apps.

I didn’t get the job but I am not bitter. The rest of the posters are probably ex-employees who didn’t make the cut - I don’t blame them, maybe I’d be bitter too if I worked there for months and was let go.

I agree with cuzican - I don’t think the world needs a webdesktop.

Ah, Roger…poor, naiive Roger. Ex-employees are not just being “bitter” about “not making the cut”, but if anything are bitter about spending 60+ hours a week trying to be “superstars” and drinking the koolaid and working for that golden carrot, the day the company goes public and they all become millionaires. WTAWTAW and all that jazz. (Other former employees know what I’m talking about.) Everything everyone says is true. Plain and simple.

SMS.ac goes through many employees. They mass hire, seat all their employees in groups, as to promote communication, but it’s really because they have no where else to put so many people.

I think their latest product, fanbox, is getting too personal. As if leeching from your address book isn’t enough…

I could say much more, but plain and simple, like many have said, a bad company.

When trying to unsubscribe, you need to enter the ‘fanbox experience’ (their web desktop) and uncheck a million notification boxes. Hell, who knows if that will even work. Email addresses I am suddenly receiving Fanbox crap on were explicitly unsubscribed from the evil smc.ac — apparently they feel that having a new app and brand makes it fair game to start spamming unsubbed addresses again - classy.

Interestingly, when I first entered the ‘fanbox experience’ from the unsubscribe link, the web desktop was focused on an open IM applet of sorts, on the MSN tab (also present AIM, Yahoo, Google) by default and asking for username+password. These people are harvesting IM credentials now. Nice. Please dear lord, somebody send everyone involved in this bastard company to Siberia.

I also interviewed and Pousti claimed to have a turnover rate that was “comparable to other companies in the industry.” After working a couple days there I realized this was a lie, unless the “industry” is one with a 90% turnover rate. That little annecdote should speak volumes about the company and the way they are trying to deceive everyone including their own employees.

Seriously! just look at this list of disgruntled workers http://jobgrades.com/company/show/52/sms_ac

It’s not just that working hard. That’s a given for any startup. What seems awful is that fact that they take advantage of you. They don’t make it rewarding at all. basically seems like a sweatshop!

Fanbox is SPAM! They will phish your password and SPAM your friends. Don’t do anything with them. I’ve blogged about them a couple of times already. Fanbox is SPAM, plain and simple

worked there for less than half a year. they treat their customers and employees like dirt. oh, and if any of you think i “didn’t make the cut” i left voluntarily, and am now making double what i made at that sweatshtop called SMS.ac