There are been a couple reports of the FCC enforcing their regulations against selling numbers lately on smsgov.com. One post claimed an eBay Seller was “Busted” trying to Auction an 800 Number and another post claimed “Man Fined After Trying To Sell 800 Number.” These certainly sound like authoritative posts, but for some reason the articles are very light on facts and the whole website is made to look legitmate like it’s governmental but it’s NOT!

News articles are supposed to include if not start with the WHO, WHAT, WHERE and WHEN. Maybe they cover a little of the what, but none of these articles include any who, where or even when. They don’t say what number was being sold and one article mentions that a “man” was fined after TRYING to sell a number. The only thing I can think of that it’s a crime to try to do is murder. Otherwise attempting to break a law (or FCC regulation) isn’t really a crime, is it? And what police are these that are “arresting” people for “trying” to do something. I’m not saying the FCC doesn’t have regulations or that they don’t care. But it’s been my experience that the FCC might have lawyers conduct inquiries but they don’t just show up and arrest people like their article is claiming.

Who runs SMSGOV.com?

Smsgov.com sounds like it’s government related or is at least trying to look like a government site, however for some reason, when you look up the whois information for some reason it was just set up two months ago and actually goes back to the Netherlands for some reason. That doesn’t make it wrong but it does seem odd since our toll free numbers are clearly a domestic issue. They are usable and popular in Canada but they are really only regulated by the FCC in the US.

Something strange is going on here!

I honestly don’t mean to impugn or dispute the information or the intentions of whoever is writing it, but there are an awful lot of questionable things here. Most of the there articles appear well written and are much better than most of the sales hype and drivel that passes for articles on most other toll free related websites. Their blog however is lacking a human voice which is probably related to why the authors or owners don’t want anyone to know who they really are. And not knowing who is saying this information or what their agenda is certainly creates a shadow of uncertainty.

Their articles also have a lot of comments but they all have a very hollow factless and even opinion-less sound to them. And almost none of them link to a website which is very strange. Everyone who writes comments doesn’t have a website, but at least half of them would. I guess you’d have to run a blog within this industry to notice this stuff as much as I do but there honestly aren’t that many real people leaving comments in this niche business even for a long standing really popular site. Not that their website doesn’t have any visitors but it’s Alexa rank is 12,901,499 compared to our which is 126,520. So I have to say their comments are clearly fake.

Oh and they have zero links from any .gov pages anywhere according to Google. I have to report on the issues they bring up because they are directly related to this, but when you combine the lack of the specifics in these articles along with the extent that the author has gone to hide their identity and add fake comments it really does make you wonder a little.

I’m more than willing to either update this post and remove the nofollow on the links or even post an apology or remove or rewrite this post all together if it’s appropriate. I’m certainly not bashing or trying to criticize this if it has some legitimate purpose that isn’t evident from here. But given the facts which I can see from analyzing this I have to say that although some of the articles sound intriguing and interesting it definitely smells a little fishy at this point.

Update:

Despite the official image they are trying to create with their government-looking seal with an eagle, the FCC and SMS/800 claim no connection to this site and had no knowledge of it. The SMS administrators said that not only do they not know who they are, but a couple of the articles were lifted straight from the SMS800.com website, and they may investigate it further because it appears to be trying to sound official when it’s not.

A lot of really funny things go on in the vanity number business sometimes but this is one of the most bizarre. Someone is going to a lot of trouble to make this sound legitmate and serious. This really makes me wonder quite a bit about the intentions of whoever is going to all of this effort and what their real purpose is….