Monday, July 13, 2009

118 800 - the company making money out of your mobile number

No doubt you've heard of this company - they pitch themselves as directory enquiries for mobile phones. Although they don't give people's mobile numbers out, what they represent is an agglomeration of available information (trawled and bought) on people's mobile numbers, which they are then leveraging for profit.

What I didn't realise is that this miserable commercial proposition is based here in Reading. I'm not that surprised though, this is, after all, the home of a bridge design company who bribed governments and violated the oil-for-food scheme in Iraq when Saddam was still in power.

118 800 has to be eradicated. I suspect the public in the UK are doing a good job already: the company is very keen to be seen to be compliant with data protection so they have handily provided ways to declare yourself x-directory (like you should have to!!!) - either through their website or by texting a capital "E" to 118800 (you should receive a reply).

The problem is, their website has now been down for the best part of a week as thousands (hopefully millions) of angry mobile users deregister themselves.

I'd like to form a campaign to make this information as available as possible, and for every last active mobile number they have to declare itself x-directory: hopefully we can put these bastards out of business. How dare they buy our mobile numbers and then give them out to people we don't want bothering us - no matter what they claim, this "service" is not required. Your mobile is a very personal form of communication - you know who your friends are, their numbers are IN YOUR PHONE ALREADY - so why would anyone need this pile of crap from a bunch of sharks based in Reading, craphole of the universe?

Get yourself deregistered as soon as you can: keep an eye on the site. If it comes back up, I'll post a message.

1 comment:

Joe said...

Hello, Joe from 118800.co.uk here.

Our service on 118 800 and 118800.co.uk was being tested in June. There are now developments we want to make to improve the service for our customers. But due to the high levels of enquiries we are getting, we are simply not able to complete the technical work required whilst the service is live. We are sorry for inconvenience and will be up and running again as soon as possible.

Just to reassure you that we’ll never actually give out anyone’s personal details. When you search on 118800.co.uk, we’ll send an SMS message to the person you’re looking for, giving them your contacts details and it is then up to you if you wish to call them back or not.


If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us on contact@118800.co.uk


Thanks,

Joe
118800.co.uk