How about getting SMS’s on mobile stating you been nominated for an award. Does it sound great!!

"Congratulation, Your have been randomly selected for an award worth 10 Lakh Pounds in the xyz survey. For further details and to avail your offer you are requested to contact on these email ids and contact numbers. The offer is valid till so and so date"

More excitement will pour in as you won’t be able to recall when you did so.

Scammers are sending scam messages on mobiles to commoners, showing them as lucky lottery amount winners and directing them to contact on provided email ids and contact numbers. This scam angle is novel as previously scammers were seen religiously targeting E-mail IDs and now they have widen their scope of scamming by attacking the parallel major means of communication - Mobile Phones.

The ‘Bad Guys’ are abusing the concept, used by ‘survey related sites’ and ‘advertisement agencies’ to soar their popularity graph by sending users lucrative offers and discounts on various products and randomly user selection for various prizes. This is assumed that a user will receive such advertisements and offers/prizes notification on its contact number until and unless user find such advertisement of nonprofit and deactivate such services by requesting the same to ‘service provider’.

The scam messages seen on a mobile suggest that spammers are keen to make the best out of it.

Below are the scam samples that have been found in one of the user’s mobile.

"Your have won 10 Lakh Pounds in the Going Cokelive int'l Phone No Draw In UK, To Claim Email ukcoca@live.com This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it Mr Waters For Details"

"ongrats! Your Have Won 1000,000GBP in The Going Cokelive int'l Phone No Draw In UK,To Claim Email ukcoca@live.com This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it orCall +447024046719."

The samples seen have SMSs starting as:

TA-cokelive Ongrats! Your have….

TA-cokelive Your have won 10L…

This trend definitely adds to the core that spammers are making their presence felt in all those area where user's credential can be found at optimum level.

To put a stop to any incoming advertisement User has to register the mobile number in "Do Not Call Registry (NDNC registry)" which is used to curb unsolicited commercial communication.

In India, after registering the number with NDNC, the time duration to stop such advertisement will be as follows:-

- Two working days - 'service provider advertisement'

- Forty five working days - 'Anonymous commercial advertisement/communication'.

The punch line that need to be taken care of:

- Keep a track of places you registered your mobile no. on Internet.

- If you were nominated as winner you must know the survey you have gone through.

- The SMS if genuine must be confirming the same through email id user is registered with and having an authentic domain to confirm their authenticity.

- The SMS sent is generally used to notify user status that includes stating the prize handover stipulated time duration.

- The point of communication comes last in case if the user won’t get the winning prize in the stipulated time period.

- Act with greed and get trapped by scammers. Take precaution.

Users are suggested to take precaution while responding to such unsolicited SMSs.

Readers are requested to post their suggestions, feedback, comments.

With Regards,

Ankur Akash Sinha