Hi5, sms.ac, and other arse bastards from hell
If people could please avoid signing up to anything like sms.ac or hi5 I would very much appreciate it. Or anywhere else that promotes keeping in touch with friends. It all sounds lovely, yes, but these two in particular are in fact a complete nuisance.
If you come across a site with a suspiciously sunny disposition informing you "this is a great way to keep in touch with old friends and make new ones at the same time!!!!!!!!" (number of exclamation marks varies according to level of insincerity), please please avoid it like the plague, it will more than likely have a nasty habit of ripping all the addresses from your address book and sending unsolicited mail to your soon to become ex-"friends". That is what sms.ac and hi5 do.
1. I am in contact with enough friends already thank you very much and if I want any more I'll find them myself.
2. I do not want my email address bandied about the internet, it's difficult enough avoiding spam as it is.
3. And as for keeping in touch - what have we got the telephone, postal service, blogs, email, and MSN for?
Thanking ye muchly esteemed readership. That is all.
posted by Timber @ 2:03 pm
4 comments
4 Comments:
Here, have a comment
Do you really esteem your readership? I doubt it. And do those readers whom you do not hold in great esteem have permission to give your details to the above mentioned sites? Ponder.
Dear anonymous,
I sympathise with your self doubt.
May I reiterate that I hold my readership in great esteem; it cannot be easy for you.
I've actually set up a message rule on Mail to do the following whenever I receive an email from a sms.ac email address:
• Delete the email.
• Block the sender.
• Send them the following reply:
"I'm normally not one to send this kind of advisory, but having received several invites to this, thought I should send this one around. Please feel free to forward it to others you think should learn about it.
Bling,
Mike
--
sms.ac Fraudulent text messaging, cult-like ripoff dishonest fraudulent billing, publication of confidential information
Company
SMS.ac
ActiveSMS
Address:
308 G Street
San Diego California 92101
U.S.A.
SMS.ac is mobile data servies company and is the most interesting example of a criminal business model I have ever seen and most likeley ever will see on a first-hand basis (I hope).
I am openly welcoming posts of other victims to add to my dirty laundry list of the criminal activities and cult-like environment in which this 'business' operates. Having worked for this company as a 'consultant' for a good length of time, I know everything I need to know to determine that this business feeds off employees, customers, creditors, frivilous law suits, fraudulent billings, theft and a multitude of falsehoods about the company that are used to bolster its credibility when, in reality, most 'achievements' are huge embellishments or outright lies.
Number one - I've never seen a company that focuses more on recruitment than on the business model. In fact, I'd say that recruitment IS the business model. Let me explain:
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.
Number three - SMS.ac ripps off users who opt into 'clubs' (interest groups who correspond by SMS text messaging) by sending bogus text messages to thousands of users 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Users are billed by their carriers for the usage of SMS.ac services. SMS.ac also has an interesting habit of making canstant database updates that, quite coincidentally, always seem to cause users to get billed multiple times. At least one SMS.ac customer service rep has informed me that customers have never actually been reimbursed by SMS.ac except under very rare circumstances (good enough threat from customer).
Number four - People are being hurt. Employees are losing friends, family and property by blindly falling for the con of Michael Pousti and his two main co-conspirators, Brandie Williams and Greg Wilfahrt. They mostly recruit young ambitious and slightly gullable types who invest a certain amount of time and then feel obligated to see it through. This is what those of us who DO see the writing on the wall refer to as 'drinking the kool-aid'. And many can only afford to live on the kool-aid since all the money they are earning (through deceitful practices they can't seem to see or admit to) most likely goes to Michael Pousti's personal account in Switzerland or wherever he's hiding it (he has family in Switzerland and visited there recently).
Number five - SMS.ac uses frivilous legal threats to harrass ex-employees and sites like this. I can guarantee that this site will recieve a legal doc which claims that this site reveals 'trade secrets'. What a crock. It's happened before at grumbletext.co.uk. It'll surely happen here too.
I will finish this in a follow-up. Please add your two cents for or against SMS.ac and the crooks that run it. An in-depth example of their recent legal threat tactics will be posted here soon.
Bob Dominis
Cupertino, California
U.S.A"
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