SMS spam from +856207349489
I recently got my first foreign SMS spam to my mobile. It said:
“You won $123,000 USD,send your email address by sms text message to(+856207349489)so we shall send you an email with more information on how to claim your money”
Obviously this is some sort of scam, and a quick web search reveals quite a few people have received exactly the same message. Usually these sort of scams are sent via email because it cost the sender practically nothing and is very difficult to trace back to the individual responsible. SMS on the other hand almost always costs has a financial cost to the sender and is far easier to trace. The sender in this case has likely hacked or socially engineered they way into another party’s phone account in order to send out these messages. There is probably a fairly small window of time in which you could reply to the message before the SMS service is cut off by the telco who provides it.
I don’t think we’ll be seeing much SMS spam in the future.
Edit: The Age have published an article on this type of activity which they are calling Smishing (SMS phishing).
Tags: sms spam
August 25th, 2009 at 11:56 pm
Spammers and phishing attackers latch on to whatever medium of communication that people tend to use.I don’t think the medium is that important, it’s more about what’s hot..
February 2nd, 2010 at 6:19 am
I recently came across this site and I am glad I did. I got a text message from some short code and it said I could get me some free ringtones and wallpaper. I started looking for some info on it and I found this blog complaint board. I almost did it until I saw this. It showed that some guy had a huge problem with them and they spammed his phone. If you don’t know what the code is then check it out from people that used it at this site. Its smswatchdog.com