AdaptiveMobile Blogs

Dumb Scams for Smartphones

18th July 2008 Current rating:

Topic: Technology

We have all received the emails where a stranger, typically from

Nigeria

, claims to be contacting you using horribly poor grammar- in efforts to give you some outlandish amount of money. Those are known as ”419 scams”, named for the Nigerian criminal code. You know the types:

“Blessings of this day! My name is Mrs Doctor Miriam Abacha. I am 68yrs old,I am married to late Engr.WiltonCollince who worked on oil company in Cote d'I voire. before he retired in the year 2002. He died in the year 2005 after a Cadiac Arteries Operation. We were married for 36 years without a child. And Recently, My Doctor told me that I would not last for the next six months due to my cancer problem (cancer of the lever and stroke). When my late husband was alive he deposited the sum Of $12.4.Million in one of the finance firm here in Abidjan capital of Cote d'Ivoire for safe keeping. Presently this money is still in the Vault of the finance firm.Having known my condition I decided to hand over this money to an individual,Brother or sister that will utilize this money the way I am going to instruct herein. I want that you use this money according to the desire of my late.husband to help the Less privilaged,orphanages,and propagating the word of God.”

Sadly, people have fallen for these scams with devastating consequences, but for the most part it is common knowledge that these types of correspondence are best filed in one’s “Trash” email folder.

However, as we recently wrote about in a blog post, scams have evolved to target mobile phones. Not only are these SMS-based scams landing in inboxes, they are also infiltrating the inboxes of smartphone users:

“Customer Services
Head Office
T-Mobile (UK) Ltd
6 Camberwell Way
Doxford Technology Park
Sunderland
SR3 3XN
United Kingdom.

We bring to your notice the winning prize from T-MOBILE ANNIVERSARY
program held on the 22th June,2008 through Internet ballot
System among 20,000 Microsoft users.You are hereby entitled to
£ 500 000 GBP (Five Hundred Thousand Pounds) winning no: 7030
To file for your claim,Please contact our customer services for
validation.

Endeavour to email them the following informations for immediate
processing,

Full Names:
Address:
Sex:
Age:
Country:
Phone no:
Amount Won:
Winning no:

Customer Services, Payment and Release order claim,
T-MOBILE ANNIVERSARY CLAIMS PROCESSING AGENT.
Mr.Smith White
Email: infodept08@yahoo.com.hk
Tel: +44-702-404-3448

Congratulations once again from our members of staff and thank you for
being part of our promotional program.

Send us an email When completing our forms please remember to
include your T-Mobile Winning no. to help us assist you with your
winnings.

Ms. Ann Larry

T-Mobile is a registered trademark of Deutsche Telekom AG.”

It boggles the mind to think that people would consider sending their personal details to a stranger, especially in this case one who claims to be from T-Mobile, yet is using a Yahoo email address. At any rate, while public awareness of these scams increase, we are here to help carriers prevent these types of fraudulent communications from ever reaching consumers.


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