Has anyone else received emails from sms.ac?

[WebDrake]

I received an email today which has left me extremely disturbed.

It's from a company called FanBox, which, according to this email, has been taken over by sms.ac. They claim I registered with them two years ago.

Now, I don't remember registering with them, I don't have any emails from that time saying "Welcome to FanBox" or similar, and yet their email contains not just my name, date of birth and email address but also my UK mobile phone number.

I'm even more disturbed given reports like this:
http://www.unleadedonline.net/uo-243-1.html

Does anyone have any information/experience about either of these companies, or know if this is simply a spam?

[23meg]

Are you sure you've never registered with sms.ac either? I recall it was quite popular a few years ago.

[WebDrake]

Are you sure you've never registered with sms.ac either? I recall it was quite popular a few years ago.

Bloody hell, you're right. I found it in another email account somewhere ... a friend had asked me to sign up years ago and I never used it. Well, I suppose that's a relief of sorts.

[Johnsie]

I think the most worrying thing about this is how peoples details can be bought and sold like that. It's amazing how much infor these social networking sites have on people. For example, here's some of what facebook may know about me:

My real name
My age
My birthday
my isp
Who I work for andhow long I have worked there
Whether I have Internet access at work
My hobbies
Where i live
Who my friends are and everything about them, even how I met them
That I have the top score out of my friends in Pacman
My political views
My religion
Anything i may have said to myt friends on their site
Anything my friends may have said about me
Who I have had relationships with
What type of phone I access their site from
Who my mobile phone comapny are
What opertating systems I use at different times of the day
What I'm doing it this precise time (status)
Where my website is and what's on it
What browsers I use
What advertisements I am likely to click
My instant messaging screen names
What instant messengers I use
What instant messengers my friends use
Where I studied
What I studied
How long my courses were
Where I've travelled to
what bands I listen to
What type of music I listen to
My favourite sports, possibly the teams
Whether I am male or female
Who I've actually hung out with - from tagged photos
What causes I support
What movies i like



Now..... If a site like facebook has this much information on millions of people it's no wonder sites like that are worth so much money.

[aktiwers]

Didn't some CD's with a lot of private info on UK citizens get lost in the UK mail not so long ago?

[aimran]

Didn't some CD's with a lot of private info on UK citizens get lost in the UK mail not so long ago?

Yup, 25 million people :P

[Johnsie]

Yep, and if something similar happened at one of those social networking sites it could affect a similar or bigger number of people. Imagine what would happen if ID theives got hold of Myspace or Facebooks records? I think the key to protecting your private information is probably avoiding those types of sites or at least submitting as little true data as possible.

[bonzodog]

Didn't some CD's with a lot of private info on UK citizens get lost in the UK mail not so long ago?

Actually it turns out they were NOT lost at all -- even worse, they were thrown away by accident!

All they know is these two CD's are on a rubbish dump somewhere.