Port Elizabeth Men Under Attack by SMS Porn Spammer

PORT ELIZABETH, South Africa—A spate of SMS messages directed at men in Port Elizabeth has apparently succeeded in threatening the matrimonial bliss of the citizenry, such as it is. “The questionable SMS, which included the name of the person receiving it, reads: ‘Hi (Name) you have 1 new message from Cindy in Richmond Hill click here to view your message,’” reported MyBroadband.co.sa. “One distraught woman, who did not want to be named, said her husband received the SMS on Thursday evening and because they live near Richmond Hill, assumed he knew the woman mentioned in the SMS.” One woman said her husband received the SMS last Thursday and they clicked the link together. “When I went to the website, I saw all these pornographic images and got very upset. We had an argument and it almost ruined our marriage. I cried myself to sleep because of this whole thing. I thought he was having an affair. I want to know who sent this SMS and why,” she said. Hopefully, after realizing that others in the area were targeted as well, the woman will give her husband the benefit of the doubt—assuming he denied having an affair. There are a hundred ways someone could have gotten his number and shot him the message. Perhaps it makes sense to assume the worst, but the fact remains that committing juvenile acts like this is so easy these days—the perpetrator of this one apparently culled names from The Herald’s Facebook page—that presuming the worst right off the bat is a recipe for marital misery. Another “victim” said he followed the link out of curiosity. “Yeah, I got one,” said Charles Vincent. “Very odd, was curious what spam I was getting, so I opened up a secure browsing session and it turns out to be a porn advertising page which wants to charge R9.99 a day for porn.” Of course, the way things are going it doesn’t really matter whether the man is having an affair or watching porn online; they’re both fodder for sleepless nights and threats of divorce.