Mixed messages in row over text website

The internet has long been a haven for swindlers, fraudsters and plain old crooks. Fortunately, for every internet scam artist there is somebody else posting warnings or running sites which detail the latest cons, so that in theory, only the very unlucky or the very gullible fall prey.

Sometimes, however, the warnings can be as fraudulent (whether intentionally or not) as the wild promises contained in the scams, leaving you with the dilemma: who to believe?

A case in point is the recent fuss over sms.ac, an international mobile community which claims to allow its 30 million registered users to send free text messages to each other, as well as offering a range of services including horoscopes, quizzes, chatrooms and news updates.

At first glance, the service seems reputable, the offer is enticing without being too good to be true (unlike other offers such as free iPods or a share of Bill Gates' millions) and if even if you do sign up but choose not to use it, that will be the last you'll hear of it.

Not so, according to an increasing amount of bloggers, websites and individuals who have levelled strong charges at the people behind sms.ac, saying that they are "amazingly abusive", and offer a "slimy" product. A few have even pointed out that sms.ac is an anagram of "scams".

For anyone coming across the offer for the first time, a search on Yahoo! will bring up pages of links to the company's website, but a search on Google will bring up two official links followed by a string of links to sites with explicitly negative verdicts on the offer.

If you do decide to go ahead, you must complete a lengthy registration process during which you are invited to submit the password to your e-mail account.

This is an unusual request; any webmail provider would advise against giving out your password, especially bundled with sensitive information such as your mobile number and personal interests.

Once you have submitted your e-mail address and password, the company will send out invites to everyone in your address book, and do so repeatedly to anyone who doesn't take up their offer.

These invites are made to appear as if they were sent by you personally, and not by automated software.

This appears to be the main source of annoyance. Anything that even closely resembles spam is guaranteed to raise hackles, and some people may feel violated by the thought that a faceless machine is rifling through their address book, in the same way they would if they caught a stranger reading a real address book.

Although this policy is explained in the registration process, it is not made explicitly clear and many feel they have been fooled.

In fact, you are not obliged to give them your password at all, but according to the service's detractors, the text is phrased in a way that make it appears that you do.

One of the infuriated bloggers, Joi Ito (www.joi.ito.com) complained that he hadn't actually completed registering, but grew suspicious halfway though and stopped. However, he had already handed over his password, so all his contacts received an invite, including ones that he added to his address book afterwards, all appearing as if he had sent them himself.

Joe Wein (www.joewein.de) says that this is to avoid anti-spam filters, and complains that he doesn't even own a mobile or know the person who is supposed to have invited him.

These posts, and hundreds of others on forums and blogs, have appeared on sites such as www.boingboing.net. The writers of this widely-read and reputable site, who claimed that those behind sms.ac are "dorks", are also contributors to the widely-read and reputable Wired magazine.

By this stage, a cursory glance at the Google results would be enough to put off many potential users.

Added to all the negative publicity are claims that sms.ac are not only spammers, but scammers as well.

Several users in Australia say that they were charged three Australian dollars (€1.79) for every message they sent, as well as for advertisements that they received, leaving them to resolve the matter with their network carrier themselves.

This clearly presents problems for the company whose name is being blackened. Greg Wilfahrt is vice-president (and a co-founder) of sms.ac, and has had to deal with a lot of rumours surrounding his company's intentions.

"We need to be very clear," he says, "sms.ac is neither spamming, nor is our company a 'scam'."

"The address book synchronisation was born as a result of requests from our users that wanted a quick way to message people in their address books.

"You absolutely do have the opportunity to choose all, some, or none of the people that are to be invited."

This is true, and even if the conditions are difficult to interpret, as many of the detractors point out, sms.ac say that the onus is on the individual to check what they are subscribing to.

"It is important to note that sms.ac cannot send any invitations unless we are first given an e-mail address and a password. Who would give their password out, without knowing what it is for?" says Wilfahrt.

"As for rates, we are not only clear as to what services are free and which are premium. We also give you the applicable rates in your local currency, to avoid confusion.

"There are a number of things that sms.ac is doing to make our processes more clear, not just in Ireland, but around the world and we are undertaking an initiative to localise and translate all products.

"We have more than 30 million registered members in over 170 countries. How many complaints have come to your attention?" says Wilfahrt.

The problem for sms.ac is that the detractors' complaints are high profile, while the millions of satisfied customers are happily texting each other without bringing attention to the fact.

People will continue to use search engines to research these kinds of offers, and many will take the results as gospel.

The main point of contention in this case is the allegation that sms.ac try to deceive the customer by phrasing the registration process in a certain way, while the company point out that it's all there on the page.

For those unsure as to who to believe, the only real consolation is that one piece of advice will always be true: read the fine print. And then read it again.