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Saturday 31 March 2012

txt4aloan.co.uk SMS spam / Sellers Griffin Ltd

I hate SMS Spam.. this one is particularly annoying.

Loan update: Brand new lender, up to £1000 instant approval all online. No Fees. www.txt4aloan.co.uk Cash within 15 mins. Any credit ok. To opt out reply stop.

In this case the sender was +447867397593 although this will probably change when the number gets blocked by the networks.

So who are txt4aloan.co.uk? Well, that's actually a bit unclear because their website claims that they are Sellers Griffin Ltd, and a quick check at Companies House reveals that there is indeed such a firm at the address they claim:

SELLERS GRIFFIN LIMITED
PEEL HOUSE
30 THE DOWNS
ALTRINCHAM
CHESHIRE
WA14 2PX


Sellers Griffin Ltd appears to be owned by someone called Will King. Essentially, this is a lead generator company who think that SMS spam is an appropriate way to drum up business.

However, the WHOIS details for the txt4aloan.co.uk website are completely different:

Domain name:
        txt4aloan.co.uk

    Registrant:
        Inter Financial Ltd

    Registrant type:
        Unknown

    Registrant's address:
        Mont Crevelt House
        St Sampson
        Guernsey
        GY2 4LH
        United Kingdom

That's a completely different company from Sellers Griffin, again it really does exist (and it has its own website on inter-financial.co.uk). Why are there two unrelated entities? It beats us, but it certainly is odd.

Anyway.. a closer look at txt4aloan.co.uk shows just what kind of company they are. Right at the bottom of the page, you can see the interest rate that they charge:
Representative 1737% APR
No.. that's not 17.37%, that's one thousand, seven hundred and thirty-seven percent interest. No wonder they can afford to send out random SMS spam for that kind of money..

If you get one of these, you should forward the spam and the sender's number to your carrier. In the came of T-Mobile, O2 and Orange the number to report to is 7726 ("SPAM"). Vodafone customers should use 87726 ("VSPAM") and Three customers should use 37726 ("3SPAM"). Hopefully the carriers will act if there are enough complaints.

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