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< Esato Forum Index > General discussions > General > "Bongo" - SMS service reveals personal information - what is it! Bookmark topic

http://www.199bongo.com is a txt service ($3 per txt) in Australia and New Zealand where people can SMS questions and get answers, or, even worse, sms peoples names and a suburb and they will recieve a lot of personal information back.

From what i've gathered from my friends and other forum posts on the internet, most of the information is true, and NOT widely available on the internet. So how does "Bongo" get this information?!

Is it legal for personal information (such as what school young girls go to) to be given out?

Here is another thread on it: http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=472451

EDIT:

Aha!! Found out how they do it, but, that still leaves the question if it is legal or not. It's still sort of creepy!

As I had suspected, Bongo uses web search engines - google, yahoo, msn - whatever, to find information about you! "Bongo" is run a bit like a call centre. Operators log on to a system from home to start receiving texts. They then answer them, and get paid per response they send. If they get a question too difficult, they can hand-ball it on to a supervisor!

- From http://edhowley.blogspot.com/2006/12/bongo-follow-up.html


Well, heres a new take on it, from http://www.hoops.com.au/sa/i.cfm/forumlist/7176/

okay let me clear it for you.
the way bongo works. Google.. NO! when you text their data base. your allowing them to have insight into the database of your cell phone.
a.k.a they can read sent/received text messages, and quickly scan for important and relevant messages.
i read up in the convo that it said it knew she wasnt over someones boyfriend, the reason for this is she may have messaged some one saying it. or something to do about it. and once you have texted them once, it saves your information and any one of your friends names so if they message it will include you in their message making it seem more real

.... although I highly doubt that is possible.


[ This Message was edited by: humphreybc on 2007-11-25 21:45 ]

[ This Message was edited by: humphreybc on 2007-11-25 21:53 ]
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Posted: 2007-11-25 22:37:16
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yeah i tryed it a few months ago wen my dads partner and her kids were sending texts off and getting surprisingly true information back! Although when i tryed it, all the info apparently about me was the complete opposite!
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Posted: 2007-11-25 22:46:19
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Actually, it is quite easy to find out information on Google if you know their full name. It isn't useful information, but enough to creep some ill-informed people out. What gets me, is how they know things about your relationships and secret feelings for other people?

Like, I googled my name, and it came up with some newsletters from school about me winning some Trumpet things, who I played with on Trumpet, then it had a newsletter about my flying - that I won some forced landing practices and won a scholarship - it also came up with our family business' website.

So, if I txted bongo saying "Who am I? (my name) Christchuch"

They can reply "You help run your family business, The Devon in Christchurch, you fly aeroplanes, won a scholarship and also got 1st place on Trumpet in 2006 at (your school).

But, what gets me as I said above - some people have been saying that they have recieved information about people they have crushes on, information about past relationships - things they do every day (look in the mirror lots etc) or how they act at parties...

...Now THAT sort of stuff wouldn't be on newsletters and things on the website, so where do they get it from?!
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Posted: 2007-11-25 23:01:29
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um in a freaky perverted way that is sooooo cool !
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Posted: 2007-11-26 06:05:39
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