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Wednesday, January 09, 2008

This One Is Real

I've received a couple of emails from a site called Fanbox.com lately. I didn't recognize it so deleted. I received another the next day. My local friend, Janet, sent this to me today from Spam Huntress

I couldn't find a Snopes listing but it looks real enough to me.

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sms.ac turns into fanbox

When I got the second e-mail from someone I didn’t immediately recognize, inviting me to answer a question at fanbox, I thought it was one of those irritating invitations from some application I haven’t installed at Facebook.

But when I got the second identical e-mail, I got irritated enough to check it out.

Turns out it’s from fanbox.com, which is a new incarnation of sms.ac, which I’ve blogged about before:

sms.ac abuse

sms.ac continues to send invitations

By now it’s not visibly centered around text messages (which to me looked like a scam that would quickly result in huge cell phone bills if you were unlucky), but rather a desktop application.

But I kinda doubt this person I got the e-mail from actually tried to send me a question. I might find out, because I’ve figured out the e-mail address (which isn’t in the e-mail from fanbox).

I think the same caution goes now that it did before: Do NOT give them the password to your webmail account, if you decide to join. Because they’ll spam your friends to death, and they’ll get angry with YOU for it!

Come to think of it, they’ll most likely get your webmail password no matter what, because this is a desktop application! The point is storing important documents, mail and passwords (presumably, I haven’t actually tried it, but it’s what I’d want to use a desktop app for, if I found one I trusted). Geez, I would NOT trust them enough to use them as a desktop app, based on their history!

Wait, I forgot to include the actual letter I received:

xxxxxsomeoneyoumayormaynotknowxxxx asked you a question. View the question and answer it.

FanBox.com is the web-based desktop that instantly turns every computer into your computer. It includes over 10,000 web applications and games to choose from, including the Question It application.

This email was sent by xxxxxsomeoneyoumayormaynotknowxxxx while using the Question It application on FanBox. Go here to learn more or stop receiving emails from friends using Question It. FanBox: 255 G Street #723, San Diego, CA 92101, USA

Update: I heard back from the person who supposedly sent those messages. She said she’d gotten starting yesterday too, and didn’t know why. But I also found I’d gotten another message, supposedly from her, and this time to a Yahoo groups listowner address. She’s on AOL, and I’m guessing she has a setting adding all senders of e-mails she receives to her address book automatically.

17 Responses to “sms.ac turns into fanbox”

  1. Steven Burn Says:

    Cheers for the heads up …….. I actually wrote about sms.ac back in 2005. Stupidly thought they’d have “gotten it” by now :(

    http://mysteryfcm.co.uk/?mode=News&date=22-07-2005

3 comments:

CHIC-HANDSOME said...

great week

eyes_only4him said...

I have never even heard of what your talking about...Im lost granny;)

Anonymous said...

Good to know...Thanks!