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Tuesday 10 May 2011

SMS Spam: £3750 for an accident you haven't had

There seems to be a huge number of these spam SMS messages doing the rounds recently:
Free Msg; Our records indicate you may be entitled to £3750 for the accident you had. To apply free reply CLAIM to this message. To opt out text STOP.
These message come through if you are registered on TPS or not. There is no identification as to who is sending them, and the number changes regularly (I have seen +447955957379, +447591260334, +447542067695, +44758137217, +447403811563, +447826688283, +447517528462). Sometimes the spam starts FREEMSG. Always the value seems to be £3750. It doesn't matter if you have had an accident or not.

If you are a Vodafone, O2 and Orange customer you can report the SMS spam to your provider: for Orange and O2 forward the message to 7726 (it spells SPAM) or on Vodafone is is 87726 (VSPAM). I have not been able to confirm, but T-Mobile and 3 may also accept forwarded messages to 7726 as well. The carriers should be able to block the spammers if they get enough reports, and take legal action where necessary.

Update: 3's spam reporting number is 37726 (3SPAM). Thanks for the tip, Richard!

Replying STOP is probably not a good idea - the spammers may well use it to confirm that the mobile number is active. And replying CLAIM is probably an even worse idea since they are a bunch of low-life spammers who probably cannot be trusted.

4 comments:

Richard said...

Thanks for highlighting this.

I've checked with @ThreeUK on Twitter and they said to forward SMS Spam on Three to 37726 - different to the other UK operators who use 7726.

See http://bit.ly/nDN3Zw on the Three Web-Site.

Hope this helps anyone else experiencing the SMS spam you've mentioned!

nath said...

Just replied stop by accident what should I do

Conrad Longmore said...

@nath - hopefully they will STOP! :) When I get the chance I will load up a new SIM and try to find out just who these s--ts are.

Minoa on NationStates said...

Better still, I'd just stop all the SMS messages: In Vodafone that's done by dialling *35*1919*16#

After all, SMS is so out of date.