Webmasters are Selling Email Addresses – Caught Red Handed

Webmasters please don’t sell our emails – this is a rising plea of internet users of Pakistan, as the subscribers base is increasing; marketers sense this as an opportunity to better sell their products – and email marketing is leading channel of them.

Just recently we discussed that companies’ don’t care for the safety of personal information that their customers give to them, neither have they maintained any privacy policy.

But what customers are going to do if their personal information is deliberately sold to 3rd parties, despite privacy policy is in place?

Here is what Saad Salman wrote to us in an online communication,

Today I got an email from “Sadia’s Kitchen” ([email protected]) with their weekly menu etc to which I had never subscribed.

To almost every website I register to, I use a dedicated email address  forwarded from my personal domain, for example [email protected] for any correspondence with ProPakistani – and to my surprise the above mentioned unwanted email was using “beliscity@something.com” as my email.

This means that beliscity is not concerned at all for the privacy of their customers and is disclosing our personal information to 3rd parties. They are breaching the privacy policy (given here) contract between the company and the user.

We contacted Beliscity, yesterday through email and today on phone, to have their stance on the situation, however, we didn’t get any response from the company as of now.

Update: Beliscity’s owner, Abid Beli has communicated to us in following manner

Sadias kitchen is my own company I didn’t sell Beliscity.com data to anyone and its Beliscity’s new company but I send sadias kitchen newsletter thrice to Beliscity.com members since july 2009 just for intro that Sadias Kitchen also own by Beliscity.com and we offer lunch services too.

Tech and telecom reporter for over 15 years


  • as a ecommerce website beliscity shouldn’t have done this. these companies are supposed to keep personal information highly confidential.

    If correct, this is very shameful

  • Actually sadiaskitchen.com is the website maintained by the same company that runs beliscity.com.

    However, if I am subscribing to beliscity.com, that doesn’t mean that I want to receive emails from other entities of same Company

  • If PTA had any guts to stand for the people, it wouldn’t have happened in the first place. But how about the rising trend of sms marketing. I never registered my personal phone number at any place. Did phone companies sold it to someone?

    • using personal information for making some decision, policy making is something different than giving out the info to any other/sister company.

    • “use or disclose your personally identifiable information for business reasons in whatever manner desired.”

      This seems very horrible to me, I haven’t read such a blunt privacy policy anywhere else.

  • The sites/companies must care for the information. Once its sold out, there would be not stopping and your email address will keep spreading and spam will be coming in.

    I just stopped checking email of my email account through which I had subscribed at a website and now I am getting like 80 spam mails daily. can’t even block them as each email uses its unique from address.

  • I am owner of Beliscity.com which i started in 2001 & we have more then lac customer email addresses but we never send any third party email to them as we have lots of offers to send their offers to our customers even they willing to pay us handsome amount for one email shot but we never did that. Sadias kitchen is my own company & we started it in July 2009 till now i just send thrice sadias kitchen newsletter to Beliscity.com customers. Beliscity.com also offering food delivery which you can see in our Gift department section. If you people think that i did wrong then accept my apologize.

    Kindly write something about those people who were selling 1000’s of email addresses @700 to 2500/- who give them rights to sell you people email addresses? Kindly write something about those people who sell mobile no.s who give them rights to sell you mobile no.s? Kindly write something about those work which is we doing on the platform of I Own Pakistan and do positive work for your country & for your country’s good companies. I am not saying that don’t criticizing on us but kindly remember that few people started their company from zero & now they are well reputed companies of Pakistan so also write something positive about their companies also.

    • That’s fair enough. You gotta notice the positives as well. Beliscity is perhaps the first true E-Commerce venture from Pakistan (as per my limited knowledge) so we should appreciate them for what they’re doing. As long as the question of unsolicited email goes, as long as there’s “unsubscribe” option, its not that big of a problem to be called as “Caught Red Handed”.

  • I don’t think beliscity.com is involve in this red hand
    I read the whole story of Saad Salman as he said he received email to [email protected]
    and advertisement from [email protected]

    I looked beliscity.com and sadiaskitchen.com and got a common thing between them that is pexsol.com[Development company for both sites]
    they must have database of beliscity.com and they are also offering services of email marketing i guess they used email accounts from the database of beliscity.com

  • The justification from Abid Belly still doesn’t make it valid. A subscriber to only one site can not be transfered to all sites a comaony own. Best is to mark it spam everytime, its best if you use yahoo, google etc. So such foul players are penalized, I can already see the website etechpakistan, also owned by beliscity, marked as unsafe by firefox, good work.

  • Respected Mr. Aamir Atta, didn’t you even think for once before writing this post ? What happens when you yourself ask for email adresses from Pakistan ?

    [Comment edited]

  • I think they are right, when they have mentioned in their TOS ““We reserve the right to use or disclose your personally identifiable information for business reasons in whatever manner desired.””

    Its fair enough to use email address for marketing of their own sister site.

    And there isn’t any sense of making such post against them. They are doing business in good manner.

  • Ya lol, BTW to be honest, Instead of providing Technology news (like new gadgets, like iPAD recently announced)

    Propakistani is posting some Fake Topics /Based poor facts and misunderstandings. LOL @ HEADING >> “WEBMASTERS are Selling Email Addresses – Caught Red Handed” DID that killed someone ??? Should’nt this be announced on BBC ?

    LOLZZZ i guess its Propakistani is just like GEO TV or ZOOM TV (bollywood chanel) who tries to make the tiny little issue into a Big Issue to get some attention. But this does not makes an Impact of Professional Readers.

    I think time to show some Maturity (instead of cashing your popularity in a cheap way)… Try like SPIDER MAG. They always do publish Quality stuff only.

    • Appreciate your feedback…!

      But our viewpoint is that we discuss Pakistani stuff only. If you are not looking for Pakistani things, and looking for iPad and other gadgets we would advise you to visit: engadet.com

  • Ok Good to know Propakistani is limited to Pakistani issues only.

    Thankyou, atleast for appreciating the Feedback!
    That’s the spirit like it should be!

    Because if this Blog was some owned by Pathetic, conservative minded people (like most of people in Pakistan are) they would not had allowed my Above comment Publish.

    Truely appreciate for giving Readers the “Right to Speak” and “Express”.

    And yes, never be rude, Forgive & Respect Human Rights! Thats what a Pakistani should be!

    Long Live ProPakistani!

  • I got 10 to 20 offers daily in my email randomly Ibroadcast , belicity, shoppk etc.. try many time to write them for remove me but not working at all .
    sometime its very interesting that name of sender change frequently some time its abrarul haq , atif aslam etc…..


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