Soon, I found an e-mail requesting I study their website, sign up for an account to take a 30 minute questionnaire, and prepare 3 questions about their company. Not an unreasonable request, or so I thought. It didn’t dawn on me that this company was shady until I registered for the account on their web desktop application, and within 60 seconds I had a cute woman named “Elizabeth” IMing me. Odd, that was extremely fast AND she said “Hello! How are you?” in perfectly correct syntax, punctuation, and capitalization. I tried to IM her back, and I got a message saying I can’t IM until I provide Fanbox with my “account information.” And that’s when the ball dropped.

By “Account information,” they wanted my full name, birth date, city/state/country, and gender. I wasn’t given an option to make any of this information private or abstain from providing it at all. So after I plugged in fake information, I reached the last step - account confirmation. Read this very carefully: They expected me to give them MY CELL PHONE NUMBER AND PROVIDER so that they could text-message me a confirmation link.

That’s when I backed up, searched Google for third-party information about their site, and found all of these horror stories about them. I’ve already changed my e-mail password, changed my registered e-mail and password in FanBox.com, and deactivated my account. It’s a good thing I bothered to change my e-mail address first, because when deactivating my account I got a message saying that FanBox will continue to send me e-mails and messages for 24 hours, despite having turned down their services.

Moral of the story: If you have your resume posted on Monster.com or other job sites, be careful! These phishing sites are not above calling you and posing as an employer.

I’m not well versed in this internet hustling,but I know that lies and deceit are probably the only thing “free” out there,and they seem to be disguised as “services”…I need none of them!
Is it too late to purge this Fanbox-crap from my hard drive before it provides its “services” elsewhere?

Maybe you should do some research before you write about something you know nothing about.

Admin Reply: Jim, you are likely an employee of Fanbox. However, for the edification of our readers who have legitimate concerns about the protection of their personal information and who we try to provide as much information to so that they can make education decisions while using the Internet, I will address your obnoxious reply.

First, I have considerable experience with Internet technology and Internet law. I’ve spent nearly 15 years working on Internet technology, from developing Instant message servers to complex ecommerce platforms. I’ve also consulted various law enforcement agencies on their information systems, from developing criminal record management systems to developing grant management software for DA offices. So, my research into the subject of fraudulent Internet marketing techniques goes far beyond reading a Fanbox privacy policy.

Phishing is a method used by companies, like Fanbox, to capture information from Internet users so that said companies may use it for their own purposes. Fanbox leveraged the names and email addresses captured from their SMS.ac service to seed their initial SPAM campaign. They continue to send unsolicited emails to the email addresses they captured from people providing their lists to them. This is, by definition, phishing. Perhaps you and your colleagues at Fanbox should read up on what phishing really is. They also create “accounts” for people who click on an email but don’t actually create an account. They use an opt-out policy as opposed to an opt-in policy. They are a SPAM business.

To address your statement: “They are upfront that they will be contacing your friends and if you don’t want them to, don’t give them the info.” Enron said the energy shortage in California was not something it fabricated. Fanbox is no different. A company is measured by what it does, especially when what it does is different from what it says.