Grepular

On the 21st of September, Poundhost.com sent out an email to all of their customers, leaking the list of email addresses by accident in the process. Rapidswitch.com managed to get hold of the list somehow and later that day, emailed all of the addresses trying to poach Poundhosts customers. I wrote about it here.

The whole episode has turned from annoying to highly amusing over the past week. A second company called GameServersDirect.net also obtained the list somehow and decided to give customer poaching a try. They sent out an email to the same list of email addresses on the 26th of October saying:

Dear Customer,

We are pleased to announce that we have secured a batch of servers at a very special price!

Dual Quad Core Nehalem W3520 @ 2.66Ghz
6Gb DDR 1066Mhz Memory
500Gb 7200RPM SATA HDD
Unlimited Bandwidth
1000 Mbit direct Connection
Linux or Windows (Windows Charge applys)
APC Remote Reboot Port
Uptime Monitoring & SMS Alerts
Free Setup

Extras:
TCAdmin with 100 Pre Installed games (£20)
2GB Ram (£30 One off Fee)

£149 per month! FREE SETUP!

To order, please click on the link below.

https://www.gameserversdirect.net/billing/cart.php?a=confproduct&i=1

Please feel free to contact us on billing@gameserversdirect.net should you have any questions relating to this offer.

Can you guess what they did when they sent out the email? They included all of the addresses in the Cc header again, just like Poundhost did. Pretty stupid huh? I don’t know if it’s connected to this issue, but when I visit their website at the moment, I just get a message saying “This Account Has Been Suspended Please contact the billing/support department as soon as possible.”

It gets better. This morning I received another email on my Poundhost only address. This time from another games server company called FPSGame.co.uk trying to poach what they incorrectly think are GameServersDirect.net’s customers. Here’s the email:

Hello.

This is just a quick message, Thanks to your Game / Dedi provider GameServersDirect.net we got an email consisting of all their emails. I can't even begin to tell you how silly this looks for them and outlook doesn't look very good right now that's for sure with DPA and all.

Anyways You may or May Not know of http://fpsgame.co.uk but we have been in business for almost 1 yr now providing games like COD4, CS1.6, CS:CZ & Counter-Strike Source (250 + 500 FPS). We specialise in High Quality, No Lag War Servers with insane Reg, as we like to say "Ping Perfect" (Wait that's almost like Simon Cowl when he said "Note Perfect" right? OMG that's cleaver ;)

Anyway moving on from myself trying to be funny, We would like to offer all GameServersDirect customers 1 MONTH FREE of what ever service they choose as a way of saying thanks for switching to us. We can also offer you a custom deal should you need more than 1 server.

There is not order form as of yet for this deal however you can take up this offer by emailing us via support@fpsgame.co.uk and this will open a support ticket for you if our piping still works lol. Check your email once your sent us a reply as this will then send you an email stating your user name and password to login to our ticket system which enables you to communicate one to one with out techs and sales team.

Oh, one last thing, Many people ask us this, YES! We are an OFFICIAL LIMITED UK COMPANY with REAL STAFF and a REAL REGISTERED OFFICE. Feel free to pop round for a cuppa if you like. Just tell us in advance when your coming so we can put the kettle on ;)

Many Thanks,

Kevin Rogers
Company Director
FPSGAME LIMITED
CHNo. 7035995

So I went to their website to check them out, and it didn’t work. It seems their DNS is broken. I wonder who provides their DNS?

mike@haven:~$ host -t ns fpsgame.co.uk
fpsgame.co.uk NS gtxhosting1.poundhost.com
fpsgame.co.uk NS gtxhosting2.poundhost.com
mike@haven:~$

Coincidence? I hope not ;)