A couple of weeks ago some of my friends sent me SMS.ac (IWNL) invites, so I could join the network and send “free” SMS messages. I had joined the network a good while ago and remember making sure that I selected all the privacy options and so on and so forth, but still getting emails from them every so often. I left that account (and the email address registered with it) well behind.
These invitations don’t just get sent to you once, either, they make sure you receive 3 such invitations from each person, regardless of whether this person actually invited you to join SMS.ac. Yes, you read that correctly. When you sign up for an account they apparently ask you for your Hotmail or Yahoo! (IWNL) ID, and if you happen use the same password on your SMS.ac account as your Hotmail / Yahoo! account (who wouldn’t), they login to your email account and “invite” your whole address book.
There are plenty of other blog entries about this on the web: Boing Boing, Joi Ito’s Web, and a plethora of others (just Google it).
Yes, I read about this also. Frankly it’s rediculous. The same thing happened to Parn I believe (the log in and send), as I kept receiving invites from him.
Thanks for the link to Joi Ito’s Web, the letter and comments made very entertaining reading – and (I’ve checked in Leah’s law book) it is definately not a contract unless both parties are consenting.
Silly SMS.ac!
I worked at this company.. there was so much illegal stuff going on there – including ALL of the employees working for free to be called ‘founders.
But every morning 3 employees were assigned to send out messages to 24 user groups.. these are groups for people that are intersted in similiar things.. anyways, the SMS.AC employees(and yes I even did it once) send out fake messages to users and the users are charged for them. SMS encouraged us employees to send out ‘controversial messages’ to try and get people responding.. each response charged every user of the group.. so 100 users x 3 cents each = 3 dollars per message.. but multiply this by a lot more and you can see what they are doing.
If anyone is putting together a civil suit I will testify under oath all of these facts.
Can anyone recommend me?
I need an free sms service for my homepage.
I am seeking one with the option to change the design(for a bit).
Thanks a million!