AN INTERNET WARNING!!!



Fanbox is the newest viral social networking site to hit the web - but it's much more "viral" than social. I would go so far as to call it an email virus. At the very least it is a massive spam campaign. Other have accused it of phishing.

If you ever receive an email from Fanbox, delete it immediately. Also, don't forget to mark it as spam so your spam filter will stop it.

Fan box uses many diabolical tricks to get you to give it your personal information. It steals your personal information from your friends and contacts who were unfortunate enough to give the program access to their email contact records. The program actually asks for the password to your email - IF YOU GIVE THEM YOUR PASSWORD YOU ARE GIVING THEM ACCESS TO ALL OF YOUR CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION AND POSSIBLY FINANCIAL RECORDS. From that point on you will be spammed almost daily with messages addressed to your name - and most of these will be from people you have never met. It is absolute, unrelenting spam - one of the worst, most invasive programs I have ever seen, and it is potentially very dangerous.

Do not provide them with any information about yourself whatsoever.

They will ask for you email, phone number, etc. I don't even want to think about what they could do with that information.

* * * * * * *

My favorite trick that they tried to play was with their instant messaging service. After logging in to view my account (so I could delete it), within less than a minute an instant message from a beautiful girl who I had never met popped up! Apparently this beautiful young girl who I had never met wanted to know how my day was. How sweet of her!

I laughed at the absurdity of the message knowing it was complete spam B.S., but I wanted to see what they wanted from me, so I answered the message. Suddenly the Instant Message showed a yellow error, stating that I could not send instant messages until I had completed my profile. AHA!

They were using fake instant message spam in order to get me to complete my profile, which involved giving them lots of confidential information. Of course. That's when I immediately deleted my account, before something worse could happen.


HOW TO DELETE YOUR FANBOX ACCOUNT:

Open Fanbox from an email. In the right hand corner you should see the word: ACCOUNT.

Click ACCOUNT and go the the Account Screen. Once there look for PROFILE STATUS and click it.

There you will see an option to delete your account.

I also told them in my comments to never contact me again.

Let's see if they'll listen. I doubt it.

For now I'm keeping them in my high-risk list on my spam filter.

Steve Riley suggests putting fanbox.com, fanboxapps.com, and sms.ac in your blocked addresses filter. I would suggest the same.

http://blogs.technet.com/steriley/archive/2008/01/07/faxbox-the-latest-in-password-scams.aspx

SURF SAFELY!