I have zero tolerance for company bullshit and threats. First, SMS.ac had all of my friends spam the hell out of me with their scam-like service (most of whom apologized immediately afterwards). Now they’re sending cease and desist letters to friends who apologized publicly, calling this defamatory. It’s not defamatory – it’s an apology for inappropriate social behavior brought on by autistic software. SMS.ac’s C&D is uncool, inappropriate and a complete abuse of the legal system to threaten people into submission. I was annoyed before, now i’m outright pissed.
That sucks, dude. Fight the good fight.
Danah, it would be ideal if those who received C&D letters could post them at ChillingEffects.org… then clinical law students across the country will mark them up so that you all know just what legal options you have and if what they are claiming holds any water.
I went to their site to let them know they’re not getting me as a customer, due to their silly nonsense. So I click the “contact us” link and… I have to join to talk to them! Yup, first you pay us then we listen! These dudes are way way way out there…
These people are Whores and Scum. Luckily, before now I’d never even heard of the bastards. But now, I hate them.
Good job, SMS.ac! I don’t even know you and I hope your rectums prolapse while you’re in bed.
you and Joi Ito are friends? that’s sooooo cool.
love the logo!
With you 100%, Danah. These guys are creeps.
BTW, perhaps you didn’t really mean to use ‘autistic’ as a negative adjective out of context. I mean, you wouldn’t be thrilled if I wrote something on my website like “man, I really hate CS298; that class is so gay“. Besides, wouldn’t autistic software be software that refused to interact with the rest of your data instead of gregariously spamming your friends?
😉
The way that i’m using autistic is the same way as the way that i use it in my talk of the same title (see http://www.danah.org/papers ). Autistic social software refers to the type of software that engages in social behavior in a prescribed and formulaic way, a systematic mechanism for dealing with people. The slant has to deal with the idea that the system is prescribing behavior as though everyone is autistic.
The practices of autism are perfectly acceptable for either systems or autistics, but it is not acceptable to ask humanity at large to engage in autistic social practices.
I despise sms.ac so much! It’s taking advantage of teens and computer-illiterate people like nothing I’ve ever seen before!
The fact that they aren’t even straightforward about what SMS is and how it works is even worse. No third party can suddenly enable texting on a phone, even though every Canadian friend of mine has fallen for it.
I’ve explained to my sister the extent of her stupidity when she gave away her hotmail login and password, causing the spam of 350 people, and forced her to send an apology email right away. Trust me, she won’t be making that mistake again anytime soon.
hello, I am getting spamlike stuff from sms.ac, and it really annoys me? what kind of stuff do I have to do to get C&D letters from sms.ac? I really want one.
shit! ive just signed up!woops
I did give my cell phone number by mistake for text maessage. Did anybody receive any extra bill for their cell phone?
Thank you guys.
Hakin
What an agressive approach does SMS ac use on their will never be customers! They will be sorry for sure . Be ware to not open or answer their shitty messages.
So does the fact that people mention that hotmail and MSN log-ins are being used to spam people mean that Microsoft is in on it too? If not, maybe they could use a few of their many lawyers to put pressure on SMS.ac or at least warn their users. Just a possibly naive thought…
The SMS.ac fuckers make it really hard to find out how to cancel the service. I had those annoying $0.25 telemarketing messages added to my bill. Eventually I found out how to fix it – just text STOP ALL to 57413
If you have personally or know others who have been charged by this SMS.ac (i.e. .25 cents or $25), please contact me at your earliest convenience to stop the alleged company practices and to provide free consumer assistance.
The company appears to have been targeting people in other countries than the U.S. We are only equipped to assist folks in the United States and preferably in California. We are located in San Diego, CA and our web site is http://www.ucan.org so you can see that what is being stated herein is factual.
Sincerely hope to hear from you and thank you.
Sue
Those bastards! They got me too. Unfortunately, my less online-savvy friends thought I meant to spam them and actually signed up so now I’m getting the same spam back from them – repeatedly.
Currently looking through inbox for my old mobile phone bills…
I signed up for SMS.ac but I didn’t do the ‘check my Hotmail’ part. I never gave out my Hotmail password anyways. I’ve heard about the spam but I haven’t received any yet, and hakin, I did not receive any extra charges on my cell phone bill. It’s worked fine for me to send text messages (no charges) but that’s crazy about the spam and charges. I’m from Canada by the way, and no troubles since…but now you’ve got me worried.
I also signed up with SMS.ac but I have not noticed the massive amounts of spam e-mails found in my hotmail nor have I found any charged as of yet on my mobile bill… but I will check because of these incidents and being worried of course. I thank you for posting these comments on the net or I would not have found out the tactful things that SMS.ac are trying to do!
Yep, those fuckers spammed me too, but I didn’t sign up with them… I was tempted to sign up just to tell them to fuck off.. but then I realized that, thats exactly what these scumbags want. I still don’t know how they got access to hotmail users address books…
My dad signed up tho… and got an invitation to join sms AGAIN this time the invitation was from himself… LOL, they should really recheck their spamming algorithm to only spam with mutually exclusive addresses.
~PV
hello i did got my self in to it but you know what ? i dont know if they are paling games on people so as to sent spam letter to them i need someone to explain to me the type of games they are paling if is the gun damn truth.
Crap! if only i checked it out first! i totally wasn’t thinking…i did submit my hotmail password and found out an hour later that the invitation was sent 4 times to my boyfriend (4 email addresses). I was razzed the next workday by my techie coworkers.
Hi guys:
I have never been on this forum until today. I received an email for an invitation, from a friend, to join SMS.ac. It seemed a little fishy when they required me to give my mobile number and email address, so I decided to conduct some online research… I’m sooooo glad I found this site with all of your rants. Without them I would have probably joined thinking it was something harmless. Keep up the good work!! I’ll make sure to spread the word about these SCUM BAGS!!
ip
SMS.ac SEEMS to have targeted Thailand. I have gotten several emails from fake-name accounts that resemble my friends who work in Bangkok. They confirmed that they did not intend to invite me or did not invite me. It is extremeley annoying for all involved. Thanks to the poster above who shows how to send the STOP ALL text message to stop the process.
SMS.ac is run by a man named Michael Pousti (“MP”) who portrays himself to be a business genius or some kind of ‘child prodigy’ who claims to have read Bill Gate’s books by the time he was twelve (funny thing is that Bill Gates didn’t write anything that early on). Everyone in SMS.ac who ‘drank the kool-aid’ rallies around this guy and believes he will be the next technology billionaire and make them all big business leaders and millionaires themsleves. Although no one gets paid and opts to work for worthless stock options (said to be worth millions by year’s end – every year since 2001) they are considered ‘consultants’ and cut a check for anything from $100 to $1000 a month not from SMS.ac but from another company called ActiveSMS. This money is supposedly what’s left after paying SMS.ac bills and split evenly among all employees. The reality is that SMS.ac requires every ‘consultant’ to be at the SMS.ac business office at 8:00am every morning for the face-time required by MP to show his greatness and attempt to brainwash his followers. There is a holiday schedule, people work more hours than a regular job and weekends are just another work day. SMS.ac is ripping off tax-payers by not paying their fair share and ripping off employees who are not contributing to their unemployment insurance. It doesn’t matter if your salary is $45K, you will get about $10K a year with no taxes paid. This is fraud if I’m not mistaken.
Number two – SMS.ac suposedly has 10 million users. A very good engineer who worked directly with the data reported to me that there are less than 500K active users. The bulk of the data is duplicate users, same users with multiple accounts and bogus data. SMS.ac makes the most noise about the user base. Yet the income doesn’t reflect what 10 million users buying mobile text messages would be. Not by a long shot. Michael Pousti claims to be a Computer Scientist, yet dropped out of college (http://www.dailyaztec.com/Archive/Spring-1999/05-06/City/story03.html) apparently to pursue a career in ripping off other college students using mail fraud (http://www.usps.com/judicial/1990deci/err-1.htm). If this guy isn’t a sociopath, I don’t know who is. So many falshoods are tossed around at SMS.ac, it’s amazing more people don’t questions what the hell is really going on there.
Check out the president of Sms.ac mail order fraud case (court papers) and other scams. This guy is a documented con artist!
I, too, was fooled into signing up, and now spam is originating in my name.
How does one totally purge this garbage from one’s PC, cell phone, Hotmail account, etc.
so, what to do when you signed up?
I visited the website, gave my password of hotmail, but I did not agree with it, I didn’t signed up. But I recived a mail, that I am signed up! Probably all my friends recived the mail also. I’am so stupid! I have changed my password, what can I do now? Please help
hello
I signed me friends up with this sms and one of them gets text messaging that charges her and she cant stop it plus im also getting charged for each text message i receive. Wot can i do to stop. Such a take on this site.
Hey i’ve just signed up with sms.ac, I only wanted to send free texts off the net. They did send texts to my mobile but I had no credit for them to take money off. Are the text messages online really free? I don’t want a big bill at the end of the month! Agggh! HELP! Loads of my friends use it and they haven’t mentioned anything like you guys all have!
Aren’t the people at SMS.AC any smarter to be doing what they’re doing? This astounds me!
Also, why doesn’t Michael C. Pousti learn from his past? “Autistic” would probably be the best description here.
An idea…change your account password you submitted. I don’t know. It might help and don’t activate shit they send you to your phone.
Thanks.
Goddamn,
Really quite happy I have never signed in for this crap!
I am getting bombed with emails with, up to the 4th request… driving me craze….
Isn’t there any way to stop this spam?
I keep getting spammed by this stuff to. But I have a plan. Let’s fight fire with fire, if we all work together it will work fantastically. Let’s use their own software against them.
Step 1: Create a new hotmail account
Step 2: Add the following e-mail addresses, as found on the SMS.ac corporate website, to the address book of your new account
sponsorships@corp.sms.ac
hr@corp.sms.ac
bizdev@corp.sms.ac
partnerinfo@corp.sms.ac
prcomm@corp.sms.ac
customercare@corp.sms.ac
Step 3: Sign up for SMS.ac using you’re newly created account
Now they will be spamming themselves. The more people we get to do this the better. Sure they will eventually block all such e-mails in their system, but that’s the future, let’s punish them today.
the shits wont stop sending me messages 50 cent 10 messages a day!
i cant stop it the sms that the person said would wrk doesnt! this is horrid
found a way to stop it!!!!
To cancel all services, send STOP ALL to 19976722
Smsac is so fuked in the head i wanna drop a nice big fat mother fucking virus in there cause the service is shit and i almost smashed my computer cause of it
i signed up a while ago and thought this would be a good thing. I never ended up using there stupid service, not even one meessage! I recieved there crappy sms’s costing me 25p each (UK). I went to there website and deleted my account. I STILL GET MESSAGES SAYING THAN SOME LOSER WHO USES “SMS.AC” WANTS TO BE MY FRIEND” this still costs me and when i go to the website to get into my account and delete my number it says “account has been canceled” or some crap like that. how can my account be cancelled if they still have my number. i decide to contact them but wait they want me to join them again/sign in. so to sum up: SMS.AC SHOULD BE BANNED AND EVERY ONE OF THERE STAFF SHOULD BE DRAGGED TO ONE TORTURE ROOM AND BURNT! especially “Michael Pousti” (thats a bit harsh)
someone help!
is the “STOP ALL to 57413” free and easy to do?
please reply
TIA
‘O’
I like the idea of going to Microsoft and seeing if they can use their lawyers to pressure SMS.ac. If SMS.ac is using peoples accounts to send spam, that would be against the hotmail terms of use (http://privacy.msn.ca/tou/default.asp). If SMS.ac is sending spam from elsewhere and spoofing the email headers, then maybe there are spam laws could help us.
Maybe that Chillingeffects.org will help people organize a class action lawsuit.
being a naturally scam- suspicious law student i actually READ THE SMALL PRINT before i signed up to sms.ac
to be fair to them, their scamming is all there in black and white
so is cancelling by sending the Stop all text free?
when do you get charged?? I started to sign up until my sister walked in the room and said don’t do it, it’s a scam. I got to step 2. They have my phone number and service provider. Should I expect them to try to charge me??
It isn’t a rip off at all, It tells you plainly what they are doing. It is being ignorant and not reading that got you all introuble. I use the service and enjoy it a lot. They don’t break any privacy laws because YOU GIVE THEM your login and password ( idiots) also, you agree in the Terms of Service. Remember when Kazaa put spyware on your computer? Idiots. Overall the service is cool and I like messaging people all over the world. I guess every company does this kind of think each free email company spams me with email.
Whateva
Look here: http://www.txt.ca./current_codes.htm
Follow the instructions here: http://www.sms.ac/help/answers/acct_8.asp
The short code for Canada is: SMSMO (76766)
fucked up service. I’m dutch and getting fucking irritated because of the rubbish there sending.
“It is being ignorant and not reading that got you all introuble.”
Is this what Sms.ac relies on?
Or, Can we opt out of spam before signing up?
Hey, I’m Dutch too and I don’t know how to stop this fucking service. Ofcourse I read the posted messages, but I’m afraid these numbers to send STOP ALL to are not the right ones for me…
One of my friends actually meant to spam me with this shit and recommended I signed up. I did, it spammed everyone on my address book. I unsubscribed esp. as I was receiving texts that cost me �1.50, using the web page I unsubscribed from things which I had no recollection ticking boxes for (I am receiving football messages but I didn’t ask for them)- however, I am still getting these expensive text messages. I would like to see them taken to court and made cripplingly poor.
Hi, I’m also getting tha same SMS.ac shit. They kept even disturbing my contacts by sending them reminders on behalf of me … it really sucks. Some of my contacts are business contacts… it’s really embarrassing. I’ve sent many emails to them to stop the shit but without response. If I don’t hear from them, I’d just reply in the same manner.. I promise to shoot their servers down. Any help, any ideas? FUCK SMS.ac