Fanbox.com Uses Members To Spam
Written by Sue Walsh on August 11, 2009
I recently began getting a lot of spam from Fanbox.com. The messages had subject lines like “Something For You” and “I Sent a Gift To You”, and the sender was someone I don’t know. The messages claimed that this person had send me a gift using an application called “Flower Fans” or that they had set up a 10GB email account for me on the system. Ironically it bills it as “world’s first spam-free email”.
It turns out that Fanbox is a website that claims to be your “virtual PC”. It also offers some type of blogging service where they charge users to receive blog posts via text message and give the blogger part of the fee. To sign up they demand your cell phone number to “verify your identity”. Big red flag. I did some research and found out that they also ask for your email username and password. They claim they need this because their “virtual PC” service manages your email for you.
If it all sounds rather suspicious to you, it should. It’s a scam. The service tricks people into giving up their email addresses, passwords and cell phone numbers and then spams them relentlessly. Not only that but they spam everyone in their contact lists. The spam messages have “to stop receiving emails click here” links but they don’t do a thing. Instead they just let Fanbox know that your email address is live.
Fanbox is run by the former SMS.ac, a shady company that claims to be an online community that exists via text messaging only. It’s been the subject of many user complaints regarding deceptive billing practices and was fined and banned from operating reverse-billed services in the UK for operating misleading SMS services.
They’ve now turned to a web based service and are flooding the web with spam. They make their money by getting people to subscribe to SMS-based blogs, and also send other premium SMS messages. Users are charged a per message fee and unsubscribing is near impossible. Avoid both sites and ignore any emails you get from them. If the senders are people you know, notify them that they are being used to spam by the company.
If you’ve been spammed by this company or got tricked into giving them your personal information, please leave us a comment and share your experience!





Yes, i have been getting alot of stuff from this so called site my self. i dont know how to get rid of it, so i just delete it. thats all i know to do!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hi,
i’m getting one or two spammails from fanbox each day, this for about two weeks now. I’ wonder how they found the certain e-mail address that they address their mails to each time. It’s an address i issued only to one certain company, kind of single-use address. The company is unsuspicous , i don’t think they spread it.
Frank
I was spammed under sms.ac’s website and now that they have changed their name to fanbox it’s the same thing different name.
I visited their website one time, provided my e-mail address and ever since I’ve been spamed with so called, “friends” wanting to know me etc…
You can file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)
FTC
https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/
Complaint Form
https://econsumer.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/
Ciao a tutti!
yes I’m stupid because I clicked on this company’s page. I got an email sent from my friend’s email address stating that she really likes a certain youtube video. But it lead to a site on which I was asked to give a password. I closed the page. But now, after around 30 minutes later I got an email from the fanbox platform in which they more or less welcome me as a new client!! Nevertheless, there was a link in the last email to cancel the account that I was creating (with my click). So, after again clicking on this link, I got the message that they cancel the account what can take up to 24 hours blabla. By reading these posts I hear about spaming but does anyone has experiences with that they want you to pay for registering or other things?
My name is being used to spam my contact list. Can anyone tell me how to stop fanbox from using my name? I guess they already know my email address.
My email and my relative’s email have been used, too. We,too, would like to know how to stop our email being continued used?? We hate to abandon our current email address.
yes they stole my whole address book…nothing can be done
They recently changed thier message to:
—start spam—
Subject: Check out my photos!
Hi,
I set up a profile where I can post photos, connect and share.
Do me a favor and confirm our relationship here.
Thanks,
—end spam—
Don’t click any links in the email, just delete it. The fine print in their Terms of Service says it all. I sarcastically examine some excerpts below:
“…You also agree that We may communicate with you through your account on the SMS.ac Network or through other means including email, mobile number, telephone, or delivery services including the US Postal Service….”
Mmmmmmm, SPAM. How can I pay for such delicious SPAM?
“…you select to purchase Premium Services by providing your mobile phone number…all Premium Services, whether or not they are delivered to or accessible by your mobile phone, may include a premium message charge on your mobile phone account…”
And how do you deliver?
“…SMS.ac and its community representatives reserve the right to communicate directly with users through any of the community tools provided…as well as to communicate with users through the Web site, mobile phone applications, or text messaging, with the objective of encouraging users to become active users of the community…”
Great, I wouldn’t want them to give up on me too easily. But who are these friendly community representatives?
“…For security purposes, community representatives may use simulated or assumed identities, photos and interests in their profiles…”
How better to protect their knee caps then to pretend to be someone else, but who should they pretend to be?
“…You agree that your public profile information, including but not limited to your display name, photograph, interests and greeting may be utilized by the community representatives or community technology to encourage other users to communicate with you or to interact with the Service…”
Thats handy, now i can be in two places at once. What else will you do while pretending to be me?
“…you are appointing SMS.ac to be your agent and authorizing SMS.ac to store, in your profile, your usernames and passwords (provided by you) to other web site services (“Other Sites”) and to act on your behalf to access and interact with such Other Sites…”
So you could like log into my email or social networking site and stuff, and then?
“…for purposes of (i) unifying access to all your information, actions, and data Other Sites from a single login, (ii) retrieving information from, and submitting information to, Other Sites, including but not limited to photos, profile information, contact and social maps, posts, communications, applications, preferences, and usage trends and more and (iii) providing value-added services and features to enhance your experience inside the SMS.ac Network and Other Sites…”
Hmmm, I’m worried about liability?
“…you, not SMS.ac, are entirely responsible and liable for all activities conducted through your Account…”
OK, no problem then. Where do i sign up?
Today I received from SMS.ac “via Facebook” this email:
Hi,
I set up a profile where I can post photos, connect and share.
Do me a favor and confirm our relationship here.
Thanks,
xxxxxxxxx
(the name of a favorite cousin who, I am afraid, is too trusting on the internet and has probably had his address book stolen)
What a scummy bunch these types are …
I got this from a blog acquaintance, knowing she’d just been to the UK & figured she was probably using it to show off her photos. Stupid me. I am also particularly stupid because I signed up for it, but perhaps because I’m in Australia, I haven’t received any SMS messages [yet?], but they’ve just hit my inbox for the second time. Bastards. Any suggestions on what to do?
I too fell for the “do you want to look at my photos” and filled in all my details. Now I keep getting emails from “Premium Blog” and have put them in my block sender list, although I guess I will still receive them. Am too scared to go into their site to try and get rid of it. I also got a worm called b20353.msi and a technician had to come and get rid of it.
If you handed over your email address and password, you should CHANGE YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS PASSWORD NOW. Once scammers get your email address and password, they can log in to your email account and search your email to find out what bank you use.
Once they find out what bank you use, they can use that same password to see if you log in to your bank with the same password. If you don’t they can try to reset your password at your bank (and since they already have access to your email account, they get to reset the bank password).
They can also set up filters in your email to forward all messages to them so they can read every email. Check your email account to make sure any extra filters are set up.
You should also consider using a password manager like LastPass or KeePass.
Hi techie c, I also received a “do you want to look at my photos” email from a close friend. I, unfortunately, clicked on the link provided in the email before thinking. When it asked to confirm our relationship, I did so. Of course, I realized that I should have looked up FanBox first. I did not enter any passwords, but I’m afraid it may be too late. (I immediately went to that particular email account and already changed my password.) Any advice?
Fanbox is nasty, I dont know why the law is not into them. Never click on any thing from them. You do not have to give them permission to have your password to your email account. They will get it someway I dont know how but they do. I never ever gave them a thing only opened an email that looked like it came from a friend of mine. It asked me for email password, instantly realized that this is pure fraud. Logged out instantly. But guess what now I am getting spam from this site looking like it is comming from my contacts. They hacked into my contacts plain and simple. Very dangerous report this site to your politicians. See if someone out there will do something about this.
I accidentally clicked on the link, thinking it strange that my 70 year old father would be posting pictures online, and needless to say, as soon as i saw the request for my email address and password, I closed the window and knew it was spam.
Also, I went to their website via a google search and found that they had set up an account for me in my real name, info they grabbed from the spam email i clicked on, of course. I did go to the Account settings and delete my account. I hope that actually deletes everything.
I hate spammers.
The only way to stop these filthy spammers is for EVERYBODY to file a complaint here
Complaint Form
https://econsumer.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/
These scumbags steal your e-mail contact list and send out endorsements of their competitor-to-Facebook social media program. Any attorneys out there willing to go after them with a class action suit? Count me in!
I got an email from them from the address friends12@yourfanbox.com. The name that is associated with that email address is part of my mom’s email address. Obviously they included that to try to trick me into thinking the email was from my mom. I didn’t click on anything, but I wonder how they got part of my mom’s email address. Maybe from some Facebook application? Could my mom’s email or facebook account have been hacked?
A lot of haters here — too dumb to do something real with your time? Funny.
Well Matt it might happen to you:
I began getting messages that I had been sent pictures from a friend of mine from college. I thought it odd since he had a FB page and usually posted photos through them. Ha! well as soon as I clicked on the link I knew it wasn’t true. Funny thing though, I am still getting e-mails about my friend posting pictures. FanBox must have some great deities on their side. You see, Glenn passed away suddenly four months ago. As much as we were friends, I really hope I’m not in any of his most recent pictures.
FanBox needs to be shut down.
To Glenn!!
I found one from them supposedly from someone I had never heard of in my life. However, it was in my “Junk Mail” folder, so apparently that filter was working in this case.
In any event, I have all my email accounts set up for “Read all messages in plain text,” and images are automatically disabled, to foil webbugs. So, HTML email won’t render, embedded malicious scripts won’t run, and invisible 1 x 1 pixel images (“webbugs”) don’t get fetched from the server, notifying the sender that the account is active and being read.
A little “safe computing” goes a long way. I imagine that this first message may have been a probe. Since none of the means of communication available to it were possible, the sender will never even know it hit my inbox, or any inbox, much less that it was seen by a recipient. Of course, it included a “manage your settings” link to unsubscribe. Right. Momma didn’t raise no damned morons. I feel pretty confident I can just delete the damned thing and go on my way, with them never the wiser that the probe actually touched anything.
I have a fanbox account and i found the best way to stop the spam is to change the email address that they send to …one of these maybe..
nocsupervisor@networksolutions.com; (sms.ac/fanbox.com’s registar/who they pay for their domain name)
iana@iana.org; (internet assigned numbers authority)
aupabuse@arin.net; (American Registry for Internet Numbers)
mpousti@corp.sms.ac; (Michael Pousti, President of sms.ac/fanbox)
mikepousti.com@domainsbyproxy.com; (Another for the Prez)
lol good luck
oh by the way if they have your email address then you have an account…..so follow their link set your password and edit your email addy hope this helps
i hav an account on fanbox too. on my cash out section it says i have earned 5.94$ of course i was so happy, but recently i found out that there were too many failure delivery on my email account. thank you for this blog, now i know, they might be using my account to send greetings on all of my contacts cause that’s what the failure to deliver mail says, it’s a greetings with some couples of codings in it… you can really never trust websites nowadays. thanks man for this post.