txt not from 3

Intasun32

m814uk wrote: »

PS, why would any criminal fraudster be so stupid as to make it so easy to find out so much about them? PhonepayPlus will investigate it and it'l probz turn out to be some dodgey gang in a country far, far away from here and our jurisdiction.

Matt

By asking such a question you show how limited your knowledge of the PRS bandits.

First; they are not stupid, they are pro's. As we have seen it is not easy to trace them when they have rented a multi use short code, very cunning. 3UK seem to have refused to disclose the details of the company, why? They would have full access to details of the aggregator and content provider and a lot more info than we can get access to.

PhonePayPlus, or Icstis in a PR makeover, what action do you think they will take? Smack their bums, call them naughty boys and fine them a few grand or accept some daft excuse that the bandits will undoubtably use for a defence. Just read some of the PP+ adjudications and what PP+ have accepted as a defence.

I agree there is a possibility that this could be an offshore attack, but I doubt it very much. The profits are not big enough.

I would like to find out how many replies had been made and at what cost per text, not bad for a few hours work. They are not stupid, they have thought this one out very well.

davec21

I have just spoken with my contact at Text Anywhere and he has told me the following.

a) Whilst the number links to one of their shortcodes the message did not originate from there text servers.

b) 3 are investigating and know who is behind it but are not sharing that information

c) As it is only users on the 3 network it could potentially be a disgruntled employee (but that is speculation)

If I hear anymore I will of course share this information with you

davec21

Intasun32 wrote: »

I would like to find out how many replies had been made and at what cost per text, not bad for a few hours work. They are not stupid, they have thought this one out very well.

It will be £3.50 per text shortcodes are assigned a value so all texts to that number are charged the same amount. Also remember the network operator 3 in this case would typically take at least 50% of this figure.

mnby9rp1

In relation to the original matter, I can completely see the point of view of davec21. I know this topic has diverged into a completely new issue about the fairness of the user's website and online competition and so I am only going to comment on the original topic of this thread: The text message claiming to originate from 3.

It is clear that the user and his website text4supercars.com has absolutely nothing to do with the text message scam. He just happened to have the misfortune (by no fault of his own) of using the same text-reply number in his competition as the fraudulent company. I personally wasn't aware of the short-code system and once another user on this forum had found out and posted that the two numbers matched, we all put two and two together and got five. We should have made sure we had our facts straight before throwing accusations around.

Personally, I am very sorry for my part in making davec21 and text4supercars.com the victim of a witch hunt. The reason I joined the debate was born out of frustration and the desire to hit back at the fraudulent-text company. Most of all, however, it was out of a genuine desire to warn others about the scam before they lost money and at the time of my original post I was under the delusion that text4supercars were involved. I now know they have nothing to do with it whatsoever.

I know by posting in this forum it has caused davec21 a massive head-ache but I think it's important to remember who the real villains in this are: the company sharing the same text number that are trying to con thousands of people. Hopefully, it can be seen from this forum now that text4supercars.com has nothing to do with the text-message scam and this forum may actually prevent others from jumping to the same conclusions we have. This is because there's nothing to stop every person who has received the message typing the number into Google and getting the personal ownership data of text4supercars.com (given that it's readily accessible to the public). So if this forum didn't exist, I expect text4supercars.com would still have had a barrage of mis-directed complaints.

I would publicly like to apologise to davec21 for making assumptions before checking the facts.

Edinburghlass_2

Thank you for that and I think on this note I'll close the thread.