Gone phishing: Hundreds of Yukoners get spam on mobiles

Hundreds and perhaps thousands ofYukonersgot a dingor a buzz this weekend from criminals just to see if they would bite.

Texts advertising "grant work"and a financial proposalwere sent to mobile phones.

In some cases, people receivedmore than one.

The texts invited people to send an email. Any response led to aninvitationtoapply for a loan, asking users tosend banking information.

On Nov. 16, CBC Yukon asked people whetherthey had receivedthetext. The CBC Yukon Facebook page received more than300 replies.

Tom Stewart lives in Watson Lake. "I'm kind of concerned about that scam," he said. "Seems like privacy's not private anymore."

Renee Mill, wholives in Whitehorse, saidshe got two during the weekend.

"It's actually the first time I received spam to my cellphone number," she said. "What I was concerned about is how my number had gotten out."

'Random dialling,' says expert

Marc Choma, with the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association, saidthatthe kind of spampeople receive by text message is similar to that received inoft-deleted and unwanted emails.

"Unfortunately, every time the wireless carriers put in new technology, the criminals sending this type of messagefind a way around that," he said.

Choma saidthe messages are likely being sent from automated software, which generates a false calling number and dials random numbersincessantly.

"It's totally random. The phone numbers are not being targeted in any way. It's just random, random, random dialling," he said.

Texts received inYukon displayed thearea code 604, which is native to British Columbia,but Choma saidthat"does not mean anything at all.

"That is just a number that is put in there to make people thinkit's a real phone number."

Just delete it

Choma's advice is to delete the message and not reply.

"Don't try to call back because there you're validating that your phone actually exists and the spam actually got to you."

He said, as is the case for email, wireless carriers are always trying to prevent spam from reaching customers butoccasionally something manages to make it through.