Christmas Texting Scam Falsely Offers Royal Mail Users Free Prizes

Dec 20, 2019 by apost team

With Christmas being around the corner, many people are going above and beyond to scrape up the funds for the best holiday gifts they can find.

Due to the holidays continuing to grow more expensive every year, any financial break seems like a miracle to shoppers. So when numerous messages claiming a prize giveaway were sent via text, many people thought it was too good to be true, and it was.

According to the Mirror, It turns out that the mail service Royal Mail was allegedly sending prizes, including iPhone 11 Pro cell phones. The instructions told the winners to follow a link that led to a website called Currys/PC World. From that website, they were redirected to another site called winanticipation, or the confirmation portion of the process. There was only one catch: they had to give up their personal information.

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While the messages and website seemed legitimate, many customers were still a bit apprehensive about whether or not they should disclose information like their mailing address or credit information to pay a fee for their “insured shipping” costs. To make sure it wasn’t a scam, they decided to reach out to Royal Mail about their prize giveaways via Twitter.

Royal Mail responded to the inquiry to inform people of their investigation into the contest. “We’re aware of the SMS and are currently investigating.” They also mentioned how to identify future potential scams accompanied with a link.

Protecting yourself from online scams is important. While winning a contest can be great, it is not worth putting your personal information at risk. Compromising your privacy can allow online hackers to use your information to apply for credit cards or use your identity for a myriad of other crimes.

In addition to being cautious online, protecting your private information like birth certificates, social security cards, and other official government identification can protect your identity from potential fraud.

If you know anyone who is the victim of identity theft or stolen information from a contest, share this story with them and help spread the message of the importance of privacy.