Cell Phone Glitch Scam
I got another one of those emails today. Well, actually I got about nine of them, I just picked one to talk about. I’m talking about one that comes with a subject line: “This glitch will assist you to create-wealth on a cellphone.”
The idea behind this is that there is allegedly a glitch of some kind in cell phones (or the cell phone network, it actually doesn’t say up front) that somebody has allegedly figured out how to make boatloads of money by exploiting it.
Out of pure morbid curiosity I went ahead and clicked on the link in the email to have a look at the site. The link in the email: http://jpdkq.lechterstrap.com/bqjhkzy/nbqnvwgyn/ redirected me to http://appscem.com/cb102.html?refer=CD15567
The page is simple, making claims that this cell phone glitch that wireless companies don’t want people to know about is making millionaires. There’s a standard “name and email” opt-in form that you have to fill out in order to go farther into the site.
Just above the form is a statement “Only 500 available! Total remaining:” and a counter that starts at 137 and begins to count down from there. There’s a trick here though. I left that page open for a couple hours because I had to do something away from the computer. I was able to look in once in a while and my suspicions were confirmed. The counter decrements for a while and then if you wait long enough, it resets and starts counting down again.
This means that it’s NOT counting down some mythical limited inventory of something. It’s just there to add a little “you’d better hurry” pressure to get you to opt-in quicker.
OH, and about that opt-in form, Don’t give ‘em your name and email unless you want a crapload of spam. I had a look at their terms and conditions page (the link was all the way at the bottom of the page in small type). If you give them an email address you are agreeing to them basically doing any blasted thing they want with it. Here’s the privacy policy section of their terms page:
Privacy Policy: We may share or sell your Information, including your nonpublic personal information, for compensation with third parties; such third parties may include, but are not limited to, our affiliates, marketing companies, advertising agencies, data compilers, advertisers, data companies, data brokers, and, to the extent permitted by law, individual reference and look-up service programs. Such Information may be used by such third parties to provide you with information, advertisements, commercial communications and materials on products and services that may be of interest, for direct marketing or any other business.
I don’t know if there even IS any such cell phone glitch like they’re making claims about but that paragraph makes clear what the true purpose of that page is. To collect email addresses to both sell and use for their own email marketing campaigns. Giving them an email address is going to guarantee you a flood of spam that you’re going to have a hell of a time getting stopped because you have no idea how many companies are going to get your address added to their list thanks to these people.
BTW- if there actually is such a “glitch” and you know anything factual about it, I’d love to hear what you’ve got to say about it.
Technorati Tags: cell phone glitch, pressure tactic, sell email address, email address collection, cell phone scam
posted in Crap WebSites, Email "offers", Scams | 1 Comment