I received a peculiar email message this morning from “Friendster Customer Service.” The message was polite and informing me that there is no “Friendster virus” and that the Bulletin Board Rumors were a hoax. They thanked me for my concern.
At first, i thought it was spam and went to delete it. And then i realized that it appeared sincere. They were thanking me for my concern even though i never wrote Friendster about said hoax. I looked at the headers and it looks like it really did come from Friendster. My next guess was that Friendster thought to mail out all of its users with the note.
There’s a problem. The message that i received, which appears real, doesn’t go to any of the email addresses that i use for Friendster. It goes to my primary address – the email address i use to communicate with friends, colleagues and whatnot. I never wrote customer service at Friendster even though i’ve used this address to communicate with various people who work at Friendster. But never about a hoax.
I’m a bit baffled. I have a feeling that Friendster is not very likely to explain why they are writing me at my personal address to thank me for my concern for a hoax that i didn’t report. Thus, i thought i’d see if anyone else received a similar message.
How very strange.
Update: Customer service responded. Although i’m still a bit weirded out. A few months back, i sent a message to someone who works at Friendster. I accidentally left off one of the letters in the email address so it didn’t go through to the person intended and got added into the Customer Service bin; it didn’t bounce; it didn’t get forwarded on. Apparently, Customer Service made a mistake this morning. Not sure who else got that message, but the reason that they had that address was because of that not bounced message. This is still disconcerting to me.
Did you check the “From:” line in a text-only email reader, or look at the raw file? Apparently some spammers have figured out the trick of putting a null character in the middle of their address to hide the email’s true origins. I recently got a fake message, apparently from PayPal, asking me to update my account. Luckily, I read my mail in Emacs, so the From address showed up as something like “info@paypal.com%0spammer@spammer.spam”.
No, it definitely appears real. And it’s not asking me to do anything (not even log in to Friendster). It’s simply a note to tell me that they are addressing my supposed concern.
One thing that dawned on me though…. does this mean that Friendster finally has a customer support process??
hmmm, I never got one so it might not be going out to all users. Since it went to an non Friendster e-mail I suspect its either an elaborate hoax or they sent it to you as a Friendster ‘guru’…
Incidentally did you see Jon Battelle’s note ( http://battellemedia.com/archives/000198.php ) that they are hiring people and that they are expanding with a focus that “ain’t just dating”.
my old profile in friendster was hacked and the hacker is still using my profile, he uses the photos and changed the name to “Malibog Ako” which is not very amusing to hear, i have a new profile now but may i please request that friendster moderators could delete the profile named “Malibog Ako” because this is an invasion of privacy and very degrading on my part, kindly send me your reply as soon as possible. Thank you very much
i recently received about a thousand email messages with only one message.. the funny thing is the spammer used friendster addresses.. can someone please tell me how it works and how i can retaliate? thank you very much! some of the addresses used were friendster@fuckme.com or friendster@hotsex.com.. it was really creative since it was about a 1000 emails i got w/c flooded my inbox.. thank you!