Smartphone owners lured in new lottery spam
Security experts have warned of a new round of ‘419′ email lottery scams targeting European smartphone users. Bogus text messages inform users that they have won the ‘GSM Mobile Sweepstakes’ contest and landed a €170,000 prize. In order to claim the prize, recipients are instructed to respond to a Yahoo webmail address. A reply offers to send the prize in the form a cheque mailed to the user. However, in order to pay for the insurance and shipping charges on the cheques, the user is asked to foot a bill ranging from €595 to €1,890. The scammers then pocket the supposed shipping costs and the user receives nothing.
Mikko Hyppönen, chief research officer at F-Secure, said: “Obviously you can’t win a lottery if you haven’t bought a ticket in the first place. “These guys just want you to pay for the ‘courier delivery’ of your ‘cheque parcel’.” Security experts have warned that mobile messaging could become a new frontier for cyber-crime owing to booming numbers of new users and a relatively inexperienced security field in comparison to the PC industry. In addition to spam runs and 419 scams, the practice of SMS phishing, or ’smishing’, has gained steam in recent years. Users are also faced with a growing crop of malware applications which target the operating systems used by smartphone devices.
Source: Vnunet
Comments(32)
I still can not believe that people can be stupid enough to fall for that kind of crap.
It’s just really sad if people were fooled by those cheap scams. They’re always so obvious.
Yeah, if anybody actually believed this, they deserve to lose the money they sent in.
“smishing”? Seriously??
Anyway, is just the logical conclution.. there are so many idiots that dont have a PC, but every idiot has a cellphone…
Its so sad that this is actually news worthy. How can so many people be so stupid and send money to nigerian princes? Or give their bank details to “yourbank@hotmail.com” or start the “free pron downloader.exe” in their email inbox… HOW?
Well….if u’re that stupid…
And there’s many…thats why they do it…
..its like a social study of stupidness..
only with a lot of cash involved…. lmao
P.S.
please Change the title to :
“Stupidphone owners lured in new lottery spam”
You shouldn’t laugh at these poor indaviduals. They need help, not ridicule. Not everyone is as fortunate to have full use of their mental capabilities or access to a good education.
So instead of critising them, help them…….
Please sponsor a helpless-idiot for only £2.99 a month. Send your money to…….
Smartphone? Well, it’s obviously not that smart them
And for the record, the ‘Smart’ bit must refer to the phone and not the user!
@7
lmao
Smart refers to the smart use of the phone’s capabillitys…
so stupid user….stupid phone…
for the record…
Why do people have smartphones when they fall for that kind of stuff :S.
omg! It’s already happening!!
The machines are getting smarter than the users.
Jadjment Dai is just around teh cornur.
@7,Sybull!
Where do i have to send that money, i want to help them =]:D?/
I’, with #13 where do i send my money to? Wow i won the sweepstakes without even playing, i must bu lucky lol
Yeah, I want to help with a donation too!!
Is there maybe an offshore bankaccount wehre I can transfer my money to?
no its real ive sen the money for p&p.. just waiting for my small fortune to arrive.. roflmao
i was a victim to that scam … i live in Egypt and i received an SMS 6 months ago from saying that i won 182,000 GBP ,,i believed it… and then i called the number they put in the SMS ..and they told me and i sent the picture of the passport and the national ID ( which was very stupid of me
) and then they sent me a an EMAIL containing a form that contains some kind of a virus or a spyware that Hotmail blocked me from downloading … i googled the whole situation and i found that it’s a fraud & scam .
i was a victim to that scam … i live in Egypt and i received an SMS 6 months ago from saying that i won 182,000 GBP ,,i believed it… and then i called the number they put in the SMS ..and they told me and i sent the picture of the passport and the national ID ( which was very stupid of me
) and then they sent me a an EMAIL containing a form that contains some kind of a virus or a spyware that Hotmail blocked me from downloading … i googled the whole situation and i found that it’s a fraud & scam . i called back and told them that i will report them to the interpol. Although i didnt pay 500 or 1000 GBP …but still i lost money for calling UK … i couldnt stop blaming myself for 2 days …not for the money …but for the stupidity. I learned a very good lesson !!!
Why would you not jusst say “take the fees away from my prize, and send me the rest”?
Still, news must be pretty slow if this is getting through the filters :S
If you are stupid enough to fall for this type of scam then you deserve to be ripped off. Also if you are stupid enough to fall for this then can you please send me your email address so i can think up something to con you out of your life savings
please email
i_am_stupid@rippedoff.com
I neveer call these things “scam” – for me its like asking someone on the street for money and if he gives it to me, well, then i deserve it.
count on the stupidizy of mankind!
I would offer 2€ coin with a price of 10€ and I bet people would actually buy…
-There are no stupid comments only stupid people
What surprises me is that these stupid people usually have so much money to spend (lose) in the first place. I agree with many of the comments that they deserve what they get. It’s not just stupidity though, there’s a fair share of greed mixed in as well.
@S. Tupid
Well said.. It’s not the problem just that they are stupid, it’s that they get blinded with greed.. Something like love, just a little more expensive and a lot less satisfying XD.. so, as soon as you feel greedy go find a warm hole where to leave your stupidity.. put it in a plastic bag though, stupidity and ward holes is not so safe either XD
smartphones require smart people.
And people couldn’t see that coming!!
You can always express surprise that a same person can have enough intelligence to use a smartphone and enough stupidity to fall for a scam like this, but the fact is, it can happen. Just like all the other scams, it’s “The Law of Big Numbers” that comes into play i.e. if you send enough messages to enough people, eventually one idiot will fall for it. That’s human nature for you
Smartphone does not equal smart user
Lol at noobs!
Why bother posting this as a news article? All us clever people must spend a good day or two reading this scam warnings only to find out that only stupid people will get fooled by them anyway. I wonder what the economic costs are resulting from the time lost in people reading all these warnings? If it took 5 mins x 100,000 people x average of £10/hr then it would have cost £83,333 in lost productivity. Probably more than people get scammed for in the first place.
Should just let stupid people do stupid things and wipe themselves out from the gene pool.
“mobile messaging could become a new frontier for cyber-crime”
New frontier? These kind of scams has been going on in the philippines for as long as I can remember when I moved here late 1999.
So nothing new about it at all. And if your dum enough to send a complete stranger your money you deserve to lose your money.
I called as guy that had texted me a message like that and I told him use the money from my winnings. Guess what, he hung up.
I would never even imagine that there are people on this planet who would fall for such crap!