I've been getting quite a few spam SMS text messages for a while now (usually once every week or two) and they're usually of the "You've got a secret admirer - ring 0906 XXX XXXX to find out who. Calls cost £1.50 per minute, yada yada". These calls are always obviously a scam as anyone fancying me wouldn't go to the lengths of calling such a service to let me know of the affections at the price of at least £1.50!!!

Anyway today I got one that reads:

"YOU HAVE WON! As a valued Vodafone customer our computerhas picked YOU to win a £150 prize. To collect is easy. Just call 0906 174 30XX*"

*I've substituted X's at the end of the 'phone number just in case the text is geniune and the posibility that the numer is specific (but having said that they'll have my number if I call them back).

So what do you think, is it a scam? I'm 95% sure it is but have to admit it sounds way more plausible than the "secret admirer" crap. Am I right in thinking it should have the cost of the call at the bottom of the message if it's an advert?

I'm not going to ring it, I'll be getting in touch with Vodafone on Monday to see what they say. If it's a con they really should know about it.

yep - received the same crap text messages .... just deleted them ... let us know how you get on !! - It would be helpful to be able to try to stop them being sent ....

i received one of them last week

at the end of the messaged i received was a website address for the terms and conditions and it stated that the call would take 5 mins at £1 a min and you receive a £150 voucher a sun tanning service which is only available in England.

Bloody waste of time

Someone should sue Vodafone for selling our numbers onto companies who spam us by SMS

Well if its from Vodafone, phone customer services and see if they know of this? If its true, they will know.

Page 111 of Ceefax has a small article about these dodgy texts.

What next Pron SMS's ?

Cheers for all the replies, I'm definately going to get onto Vodafone tomorrow about this. If this is them then they'll get an earful (though I'll be emailing them ) and if it's not then they should know some dodgy company is claiming to be them.

I'm not sure why I get all this crap as I never used to get any spam on my old One2One PAYG, it's only happened since I got a new phone and switched to Affinity/Vodafone PAYG. But at the same time as I got the phone I joined up with Genie for those free SMS messages and SMS alerts. So I don't know if it's Affinity, Vodafone or Genie (or whatever it's called this week) or if it's all three to blame!

Unfortunately I've already received them!

I'm not a prude or anything but I can't stand porn getting sent to me in my email or as TXT messages. If I want I can go and get it but I shouldn't have this bloody crap sent to me without asking for it.

Apart from "junk txt's" being anoying - they might actually cost you money when roaming. In a small handful of countries around the world you are charged for receiving a text message. India is one example - 20p per message.

A while back I was getting spam messages from Vodafone themselves - well Vizzavi so same differance. After being bounced round from person to person on a couple of occasions, I was finally told "Write to...".

I was bloody pissed-off by this point. So I wrote them a polite letter asking them to stop. But offering to handle such messages in the future for £50. Got a form letter back telling me they had actioned my request (although I suspect they simply changed the voice-mail alert from SMS to voice).

A couple of weeks back I got another Vodafone spam. So I've mailled them asking how they intent to pay

Don't expect it will work. But it's a laugh.

I saw an article somewhere over the last couple of days (on BBCi or similar no doubt) basically reporting about this problem.

An Orange Representative basically said to contact them to complain, as they will bar the senders number from their network or prevent the number sending to the orange network, to cover both bases.

I would assume that Yodafone, Tits-Mobile and g02 next operate similar policies, so phone up and moan-moan-moan....

What you're describing is basically Fraud... If you feel like it, you should probably report it to :

http://www.met.police.uk/fraudalert/index.htm

They have a bunch of people looking into this stuff right now as its getting to be a really big problem.

nid