Message scam about rewards points from EE

[Margih62]

Hi is anyone else getting messages supposed to be from EE  saying they've got thousands of rewards points that's going to be  lost in 2 days if they dont  click on the link to spend them?

[InternetPerson]

No chance. What are the odds that the scam text would come at the exact same time as the legitimate ones? From multiple different people? Either prove that you've taken this seriously and escalated it or I'll report it to the ICO as a data breach.

[bristolian]

It's fairly common spamming technique that a blanket text or email will yield a small number of positive reactions, more than justifying the overwhelming majority of false or ignored hits.

I suspect the ICO would want proof of a data breach, rather than just coincidence or conjecture.

[InternetPerson]

You're misunderstanding, the scam texts are arriving at the exact same time as legitimate texts. For example, I upgraded a contract and was getting all the legitimate texts from EE about upgrading and at the exact same time a scam text arrived. The only scam text of its kind I had ever received happened to arrive at the same time as they were sending legitimate ones, and I'm not the only person to experience this.

There is absolutely no way that this is a blanket scam text that just happened to arrive at the same time, somehow scammers are getting live access to EE sales data and that's a breach. It could also be that EE is sharing sales data with third parties and one of them is running these scams, but the ICO classifies that as a data breach too. And they don't need definitive proof from us (we can't possibly have proof as it requires access to EE's systems), just enough information to begin an investigation and see where the data is going.

[bristolian]

There's no misunderstanding from my previous post, I'm admiring the conspiracy theory but shedding some possible light on the coincidence.

[Leanne_T]

Hi @InternetPerson 

EE take security very seriously when it comes to handling your data. You can find more information on our Privacy Policy page.

These messages can be very convincing and look or sound like genuine messages sent by organisations you already deal with, and may even appear within an existing message string from a known organisation.

If you have received a scam message, please forward it to 7726 free of charge so that it can be investigated by a security team.

Please see our Online Security: Avoid and Prevent Scams | EE for more information. 

Leanne. 

[Lindas11]

Same saying I had 5,000 points to spend pay 1p? I've deleted the txt 

[XRaySpeX]

@InternetPerson : Coincidental arrival times of texts does not imply coincidental sending times.

[InternetPerson]

You have not shed light on the coincidence, you didn't explain it at all. If this were just something that happened once to one person I'd accept that it's a one in a million fluke that a scam text arrived at the same time and day I upgraded.

Coincidences happen. But it's now happened to someone else, the odds of it being a coincidence are rapidly diminishing. How many one in a million coincidences do you need before it becomes clear something else is going on? 

[XRaySpeX]

No, I'm just shedding light on suppositions & assumptions 😉 !

[InternetPerson]

You are genuinely trying to claim that the day and time a text is sent is not related to the time it's received?