Unsolicited Calls And SMSes From Chatlines « Blog

Tuesday, 11th March 2008

Unsolicited Calls And SMSes From Chatlines

Posted By Lester Chan at 09:25 in Blog

14 Responses
482 views

I got woken up by a call at 4.34am this morning. It is a guy over at the end of the line and here is the brief conversation we had:

He: Is that Lester? Are you from Chatline?
Me: Yes, I am Lester, but I am not from Chatline
He: Are you from Chatline? (he ask again)
Me: No
He: Ok Thanks, I think you friend had sabotage you by putting your name and number on chatline
Me: I see, Ok, Bye (I hang up after that)

I went back to bed and 5 minutes later, calls and SMSes keep coming. All the numbers point to mobile phone numbers and none of them is private. I did not pick up any calls, but I took a look at the SMSes and they all mean this “Hi, are you from chatline? Care to do a intro?”

I was like WTF? It is like 4.45am in the morning and I am getting all this nonsense. I got quite pissed off and I woke up and did a google search of my mobile phone number and the phrase “chatline” in Google Singapore.

Guess what? I chanced upon this news article by The Straits Time, “Irritating chatline SMSes invading privacy” and it is dated on 6th March 2008 which is like only 5 days ago.

Apparently the victim is also a M1 subscriber which is same as me. M1 asked the victim to report police which I think is not much of a help as the police can’t do anything besides filling a report.

I am going to terminate my M1 contract once my 2 years contract expire with them in September 2008 and by that time the True Number Portability will be out.

Chatlines are used mainly by guys judging from the calls and SMSes I received. To those guys, please GET A FUCKING LIFE. If you are so desperate into getting friends to talk to you, brush up on your social skills or sign on with the army and you got lots of buddy waiting for you.

14 Comments

David

Comment #1

10:44
Tuesday, 11th March 2008

You should lodge a complaint to IDA. There should be some telecom regulations M1 has to follow with regards to sharing of customer data.

It’s just like the mTouche case back in 2006.

Shaun

Comment #2

12:37
Tuesday, 11th March 2008

wah it is that bad ah… is it isolated for M1 only?

I used to get some promo ads frm companies I am not affiliated to, maybe one should take caution when posting numbers up, esp on the internet man.

GaMerZ

Comment #3

12:59
Tuesday, 11th March 2008

David: I will if this continue on.
Shaun: No idea on that, but apparently from the ST article and my base, it is M1 only. I only post number n my FB and MSN so technically only my friends can see it.

Shaun

Comment #4

12:59
Tuesday, 11th March 2008

Lest, maybe u shld check out yr site listings on http://www.aboutus.org/ or any domain name registar, they seem to have personal details posted there as well. Maybe you should edit them.

GaMerZ

Comment #5