Stopping Maxis / Hotlink Spam

AndyKoh · #1 07-04-2008, 02:56 AM

Hi Guys,

Ah, this posting is not about your best buddy doggy or kitty. This is about something that's even closer to you, 24 hours a day - your mobile phone!

Guess what? Maxis and Hotlink have been spamming me ever so consistently - with the latest spam on how to stop spams. And I bet you guys received them too! The heaviest number of spams I receive come from who else, but our beloved telco, averaging at least 1 a day, asking me to subscribe to music, join Euro quiz, top up immediately, listen to football match highlights, win RM1,000 cash and dozens more.

A check at Maxis' Anti-Spam Page emphasizes that their own mesages "are not spam". Hmm, unsolicited messages that I have not knowingly granted consent for, no obvious way to remove myself from further advertisements and unable to reply to the message sender - I wonder what this should be called, if it is "not spam"?

Well, although there appears to be no recourse, there actually exists a method which they did not mention explicitly. All you need to do is send an email to donotdisturb@maxis.com.my, give them your mobile number and tell them to PERMANENTLY remove you from all Maxis and Hotlink spams. I have just done that, and according to them, it would take about a week to fully stop their spams from reaching me. I'm keenly observing to see if this works, and I suggest that those of you who are irritated by such spams should give it a try too and let me know if it works for you

Oh, and regarding their latest "innovation" - is to have you pay a monthly subscription to use their Anti-Spam Service. If you read their Anti-Spam Page stated earlier, you'll notice that they are actually determining spam by filtering keywords. I have not used it yet, so I might not understand it fully, but from the outlook it appears very similar to standard spam email filtering.

Any Email user can tell you the result:
(1) Spam will still come in as spammers find ways to circumvent the filtered patterns and alter their messages, just like how you receive tons of daily spams that intelligently adapt to the latest news subjects and content;

(2) Valid messages will be incorrectly filtered, causing you to miss out on possibly crucial messages, just like how your valid emails often wrongly end up in the junk folder. At least in email I can still scan my junk folders occasionally, but an incorrectly filtered SMS will be gone for good.

What I believe would work is to have all Malaysian Telcos build a unified anti-spam database, and make available a toll-free short code number where anybody can instantly forward spam messages to, and they will investigate into those originating phone numbers, with the relevant telco taking immediate action on the offending user. Now that all prepaid users are required to register with their ICs, we can instantly track down the culprits, and blacklist them permanently from registering for ANY telco service. Content providers found to be sending spam should have their licenses and accesses revoked permanently. Proper anti-spam legislations should also be enacted to prosecute these parties. A similar approach can be applied to spams that originate from overseas by working closely with other countries' telco counterparts.

We have to eliminate the mobile spam at the source, and I believe this is much easier to achieve for phones which are usually easy to pinpoint the user, unlike email which is freely available and often anonymous. Of course, the first thing telcos must do is to clearly make available a method for users to unsubscribe from their own telco's spam.

dog is my buddy · #2 07-04-2008, 01:06 PM

I have receive a called from Maxis, they want offer me new sim card as free charge by monthly. I think free from Maxis? no thank!!!

AndyKoh · #3 07-05-2008, 01:29 AM

Haha.. yup, there's no free lunch, there "must be some prawns behind the stone"!

This reminds me of the loanshark Maybank which sent me RM5,000 checks for 2 or 3 times, persuading me to bank in the check, saying it is interest free, blah blah blah... well they disguised the interest as a "one-time processing fee" and are hoping to get me into debt, starting with small little loans and ending up with my life screwed by big loans!

Well, I'm not so stupid haha... no thanks!

Ezer · #4 07-05-2008, 02:04 AM

I am a poor, poor victim of Maxis!! Let's get a class action suit going.. hehe.. Hopefully Maxis reads this thread and STOP spamming. Aren't they already bleeding us dry with their giant bills??

AndyKoh · #5 07-05-2008, 02:09 AM

Haha.. yeah, I can only wonder how many of us users are victims of telco spam!

Ah, I sure hope Maxis reads this - and if someone does a google search of "stop maxis spam" or "hotlink spam", this article appears as the #1 result, ahead of Maxis' own "Anti-Spam" service page

dog is my buddy · #6 07-05-2008, 12:56 PM

they also like sending sms spam. I need find a software like PC one, antispam sms and phone. hahahahhahah

blackie007 · #7 08-11-2008, 04:39 PM

Sorry, I know this is old message, but I'm also a Maxis subscriber, not only mobile phone, but the broadband service, too.

I think Maxis does have a crawler that looks for any mention of their name in the Internet, and read those posts.

I was very frustrated with their service a while ago, it went from bad to worse, so I ranted about them in my blog. Surprisingly, the next morning, I saw a visitor from their company reading the post (I have a tracker in my blog).

The service improved tremendously after that, even faster than it had ever been. Then, about a week later, it went back to its narrowband (as opposed to broadband) again.

I ranted and vented again in my blog. Again, they came. And it has improved since then. While it is not as good as other broadbands, it is alright for Maxis standard. (eh, no confused smileys here??)

BabyZee · #8 08-11-2008, 05:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by blackie007

Sorry, I know this is old message, but I'm also a Maxis subscriber, not only mobile phone, but the broadband service, too.

I think Maxis does have a crawler that looks for any mention of their name in the Internet, and read those posts.

I was very frustrated with their service a while ago, it went from bad to worse, so I ranted about them in my blog. Surprisingly, the next morning, I saw a visitor from their company reading the post (I have a tracker in my blog).

The service improved tremendously after that, even faster than it had ever been. Then, about a week later, it went back to its narrowband (as opposed to broadband) again.

I ranted and vented again in my blog. Again, they came. And it has improved since then. While it is not as good as other broadbands, it is alright for Maxis standard. (eh, no confused smileys here??)

blackie, which broadband package ure using?
i'm using the small modem,mine's the ladybird design..heh..

neway i'm also having the probs same as yours and last thursday also the prob was so bad until i needed to go to their maxis center and the nearest to me was the sunway pyramid center..
they settled all of the prob and the results was they gave me a new modem cuz the previous one was damaged or something..
beside that the service there was quite bad, i saw people having problems that can be settled within 15minits but took unti 1hour to settled it!
woah, i think maxis can do better than that..
i hope they'll upgrade their service in everything, it's tiring to call their call center everytime we have problems and the result we need to go to their maxis center...huhu..

well since i change the modem, lucky until now i never have any probs yet (well hope it stays that way)..
I never get disconnected and the speed quite fast even in the day time, no need to mention during night...very fast...
well maxis, if ure reading this do upgrade ur services from every aspects but if u need a full complain report just pm me..
or maybe if there're more problems next time then u'll just wait for my call to your center....

AndyKoh · #9 08-11-2008, 05:25 PM

Well, here's what happened.. I first made the complaint and they responded on July 4th saying they'll remove me from all spams. 3 weeks passed, and spams kept coming in, so I wrote a pissed email to Maxis again. They responded with an email saying they don't know why I'm still receiving their spams (pathetic excuse!).

A day or two later, they called to tell me that they have removed me for good. (Less than 5 minutes after the call, I got spammed twice again).

Well, but it did seem to work this time - a day or two later, all spams ceased, till this very day I've led a very peaceful mobile phone life. (fingers crossed!)

In short, it takes the incompetent Maxis almost 1 Full Month to reluctantly remove you from their irritating spams. Be sure to try it out and let your friends know!

I can't wait for the day when people are massively removing themselves from Maxis spam, overwhelming their customer service department till they have no choice but to stop their spamming activities or publish an obvious, effective procedure for the public to do so!

June · #10 08-11-2008, 05:41 PM

Aiyoh!! I'm also the victim of maxis spam.very annoying u know.I can't stand it anymore.So I called their customer service centre and asked them to stop all the spam to my HP.well, bro i got news for you.They said ok,ok but spam continue until today.

Quote:

Originally Posted by AndyKoh

Haha.. yeah, I can only wonder how many of us users are victims of telco spam!

Ah, I sure hope Maxis reads this - and if someone does a google search of "stop maxis spam" or "hotlink spam", this article appears as the #1 result, ahead of Maxis' own "Anti-Spam" service page

blackie007 · #11 08-11-2008, 06:03 PM

Yeah, the USB modem, right? It looks to me like if we complain loudly, we get better service......you know, the wheel that squeaks gets the grease.

Well, their broadband may be fast now, but if you compare to other broadbands.....whenever I am at my hubby's sales office, I'll use his office broadband, and it's much faster than Maxis'. You don't even have to chance to see the screen change to the next page. It's faster than you can blink your eye. So, why can't Maxis provide that kind of connection?

Quote:

Originally Posted by BabyZee

blackie, which broadband package ure using?
i'm using the small modem,mine's the ladybird design..heh..

neway i'm also having the probs same as yours and last thursday also the prob was so bad until i needed to go to their maxis center and the nearest to me was the sunway pyramid center..
they settled all of the prob and the results was they gave me a new modem cuz the previous one was damaged or something..
beside that the service there was quite bad, i saw people having problems that can be settled within 15minits but took unti 1hour to settled it!
woah, i think maxis can do better than that..
i hope they'll upgrade their service in everything, it's tiring to call their call center everytime we have problems and the result we need to go to their maxis center...huhu..

well since i change the modem, lucky until now i never have any probs yet (well hope it stays that way)..
I never get disconnected and the speed quite fast even in the day time, no need to mention during night...very fast...
well maxis, if ure reading this do upgrade ur services from every aspects but if u need a full complain report just pm me..
or maybe if there're more problems next time then u'll just wait for my call to your center....

I know what we can do.............let's all spam them! See if they like having the tables turned on them.

Quote:

Originally Posted by June

Aiyoh!! I'm also the victim of maxis spam.very annoying u know.I can't stand it anymore.So I called their customer service centre and asked them to stop all the spam to my HP.well, bro i got news for you.They said ok,ok but spam continue until today.

Ezer · #12 08-11-2008, 06:11 PM

Well, the next time you guys call maxis, send them this post here... and let them read it... and they'll panic as the blogosphere and forumners are posting actively about their spammering... maybe we'll even convert some to use other providers...

AndyKoh · #13 12-17-2008, 01:32 AM

Hi Guys,

Here's an update - so far Maxis has stopped spamming me for the past 3 months after my complaints, except for 1 promotional message which must have somehow slipped through their filters early this month.

So, to all of those out there who are sick of spams from your trusted Maxis telco, don't forget to try out the instructions in my first post and free yourself from their evil spam!

And for those of you who are not aware of Maxis's 3G prices, hold your breath while I show you this:

Maxis 3G Charges: 1 Sen / Kilobyte!

Are they still living in the stone age? Is their company still using 14.4k modems from the BBS era 15 years ago? In the current broadband era, one SINGLE webpage can easily be 100 kilobytes or more - and that will cost you a whopping RM1 just to load 1 page!

And, they actually have the guts to offer 1Mb and 5Mb monthly package plans.. no, this is not about getting a broadband 1Mb/s or 5Mb/s speed - it is about downloading 5 Megabytes of total data! (that's about the size of 1 MP3 song)

To top it off, they then wrote this:

Did they just say, "See how affordable it is to browse"? In fact, their figures there are extremely misleading, so misleading that I would consider that as downright cheating unsuspecting consumers. They stated that 1Mb can load 50 Facebook pages - that means an unrealistic 20kb per page - and did they conveniently forget about all the images and photos to be loaded within each page? As an experiment, I checked out the size of my Facebook profile page. Guess what - the HTML page itself is already 270kb, and images took up 1.2Mb! Oops, did I just use up my entire 1Mb Monthly Plan by loading my Facebook profile page, and had to pay an additional RM5 penalty for the extra 500kb loaded? Cool, that's RM10 for just loading my own Facebook profile page.

More of their amazing plans here:
http://www.maxis.com.my/personal/mob...arch/index.asp

There is no way our country can properly encourage knowledge and technology growth with such prohibitive pricings. It is like building a super highway with toll booths at every 100 meters.

This is clearly a final, dying struggle by the telcos that are very afraid that cheap bandwidth will cause people to switch over to free VOIP calls and forsake the telcos' closely-guarded voice call revenues which are doomed to fail with the introduction of broadband internet.

They have no choice but to start switching their business model, deriving more revenues from value-added and data services instead of just voice calls, especially with the proliferation of hotspots and WiMAX that are offering internet access at a fraction of their rates and multiples of their speed.

Ezer · #14 12-17-2008, 07:48 AM

Andy, like my grandpappy always used to say, 'you hit the nail on the tiger's head'... and, in this case, the Tiger's Maxis, and hopefully you nail shut their coffin as well!! Because, lo and behold, like a blood sucking Vampire, they'll suck your money dry!

Maxis is ANTI-Internet! as far as I am concerned.