SMS Marketing Industry News

Top 10 SMS Scams of 2012

We already know what the top 25 SMS spam area codes in the U.S. are, but do you know what the top 10 SMS scams are? Thanks to a new report from our friends at Cloudmark, you now do.

Coming in at #1 with a significant lead is the “free gift card scam” made popular with fake giftcard offers from the likes of Walmart and Best Buy, followed by the ever popular “iPad/iPhone giveaway scam”. You see the full list below.

Graph-Top 10 Text Message Scams

In my opinion, these are all pretty tame compared to the recent text message scam being sent to Australians saying “Sum1 paid me to kill you. get spared, 48hrs to pay $5000. If you inform the police or anybody, death is promised E-mail me now:killerking247@ yahoo.com.” You have to give these scammers a little credit for coming up an email address that would make most other people in this line of work jealous.

 

Other Interesting Facts from the Report:

  1. Unique Domains used in SMS scams increased 25% from first quarter to second quarter with the biggest spike in April predominantly in North America and Europe.
  2. Unique Phone numbers used in SMS scams decreased in the second quarter specifically in the month of June.
  3. North America ranked the 2nd lowest in overall spam volume from April to June 2012.
  4. Asia Pacific was the top region for overall SMS Spam origination with almost 4 times the amount of spam originating in North America!

 

Have you received a text message that seemed more than a little sketchy? Let us know in the comments below what type of scam it was.

Want more info, download the full report.


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