We all heard the news that Facebook took over WhatsApp. Although I had never any problems using WhatsApp, I noticed in my environment that people were looking for a replacement. And it seems that the majority choose for Telegram. So I followed them. Too bad that after the installation of Telegram I started to receive SMS Spam.
A day after installation of Telegram and giving them access to my phone number I start receiving the following SMS from number +447535263650:
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Congrats!Your Mobile Number was Randomly Selected as a Winner of £2,500.000 with Winning Number 001/2014 on FreeLotto. Email:contactand777@gmail.com for claims. |
And a similar message from number +447961251025:
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Congrat! your mobile number was selected as a winner of £2,000000.00 with Winning No 101231-14 on FREE LOTTO. Email: frelott8@gmail.com for claims. |
I received both messages twice. In the last year I never received any SMS Spam, but after joining Telegram and giving them access to my number I received 4 messages. Is this really coincidence?
Especially because other people also seems to receive spam after joining Telegram. Seems they do react to some messages on twitter, all messages related to this Spam are all ignored.
If we look at it from another point of view, a huge spam/scam run was going on and during that period people also joined Telegram. The question is, what was first, and is it related?
According FreeLotto these messages are not real. Still I wanted to try my luck and created a new mail-address called lottowinner@xxxxxxx.xxx and send a mail to them:
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Hello, I received your SMS for winning the lottery. I would like to claim the price. Thanks |
And look at that, I got a reply with two attachments:
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Your Email & Winning Number has been Acknowledged. Contact the Courier Department for the Effective Delivery Of Your Package. Anderson Moore (Fiduciary Agent) Attachment: WINNING CERTIFICATE.pdf Attachment: Courier Department Contact Information.pdf |
Virustotal thinks both files are safe. For the sake of the readers I have converted the pdf to png format.
It is amazing that they can confirm my mail-address (which didn’t exist for more than an hour) and the winning number (which I didn’t mention in the mail), but the certificate seems legit, so guess I have to mail the Courier.
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Hello, for claiming my price I was asked to send you the following information. Name: Jan Klaassen Address: Dorpsstraat 38, 1294 DD KlazienaVeen, Netherlands Mobile Number: +316 89 6xx xxx Winning Number: 001/2014 Thanks! |
And I received another reply with another attachment.
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Find Attached your Delivery Form & Complete Correctly for the Effective Delivery Of Your Package, James Connell (Delivery Team Manager) |
Attachment seems to be also malware free. At this point I got tired to contact them. Although it would have been nice if I could craft a PDF file with some malware attached to it to get control of their system and learn more about them. Too bad I am one of the nice guys.
Although I like a message service which I can use on my phone, tablet and desktop, I don’t like to get bothered by Spam/Scam. Let’s hope this was just a coincidence and a one four time only run and not the way Telegram is making their money.
Well I installed telegram about 6 months ago and i received a confimation sms from telegram, but I never received spam sms. I think its a coincidence, any way thanks for the info, and the investigation on the scam.
Same here, i’ve been using telegram for a while, and im so happy with it, works fine, and i believe much better than whatsapp, never recieved any sms
Maybe a contact friend is infected and he has your phone and mail?
lol. This experience of yours reminds me of what happened to me a couple of years back, that’s talking of spam sms. I decided to follow up on one after several ones I had ignored. I got pissed off because the guy or whoever was at the end couldn’t even write good tenses.