blog - coda.coza » SAFriends.NET http://coda.co.za/blog dress up. leave a false name. be legendary. Thu, 23 Jun 2011 05:01:54 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9 en hourly 1 Discovery leaked my e-mail address http://coda.co.za/blog/2007/04/03/discovery-leaked-my-e-mail-address http://coda.co.za/blog/2007/04/03/discovery-leaked-my-e-mail-address#comments Tue, 03 Apr 2007 00:44:06 +0000 coda http://coda.co.za/blog/2007/04/03/discovery-leaked-my-e-mail-address When I sign-up with a new service or get asked for my e-mail address, I ensure that I use a unique alias each time and rarely provide my personal address. This way I can easily filter my incoming messages, but also track sources of spam. If I receive spam on an address that I've only given out once before, then clearly that web service/store/bank/band did not protect my e-mail address like they claimed they would.

I received the following e-mail snippet two hours ago:

*** THIS IS AN AUTOMATED MAIL FROM AN UNMONITORED MAIL ADDRESS. PLEASE DO NOT REPLY TO THIS MAIL ***

Welcome to SA Friends.NET

A profile has been automatically created for you to enable you to find your South African school, university and national service friends using our 100% free service.

Please log on to the site and complete your profile and school details now....

The recipient address? discovery@coda.co.za

Thank you, Discovery Group, for apparently breaching your privacy policy and sharing my e-mail address with the apparent scam that is SAFriends.Net. I don't know which is worse or who to continue ranting about.

Take a look at SAFriends.Net for yourself. Using the UK flag and what appears to be the old South African flag to identify "English" and "Afrikaans"? Look at their dating page!! What! The! Fuck! Look at their Chat Forum and especially it's terms of use which talks about "the jurisdiction of the appropriate federal or state courts of New Jersey, United States of America".

The SAFriends.Net domain whois lists "Umhlaba" as the registrant and admin contact, with the URL geomatics.com, which itself is a bunch of ads kak. I think they hijacked the Umhlaba name - I just called the number provided (27218722760) but reached the voicemail of an Afrikaans woman called Nina.

Anyway, I don't know where to go with this, but just to say that Discovery are a bunch of pricks and SAFriends.Net is a scam. Now you know. UPDATE [06/04]: This issue has been resolved thanks to the efforts of everyone at Discovery. The guilty party and their scam website are suffering the consequences.

Oh, and apparently consumer website HelloPeter.com is a scam, too! (via Muti) UPDATE [05/04]: Peter responds: Hellopeter.com: Scam or jam?

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