I bought a SONY camera two weeks ago through Amazon. I registered it last week on the sony.ie website. Then, I got a text message on my phone this morning saying "You are a winner. You have been chosen to receive a free gift. Go to [ link to malicious website removed - Brendan]and tell us where to ship your gift". The phone number looks like a US number +14078027878.
All this sounded dodgy but that fact that I had indeed registered with Sony, and they had sent me a text made me go to the link where there's an 'innocent enough' shopping site.
This is all very worrying. It looks like Sony has been hacked somewhere and my phone number has been accessed. I found this response from SONY on facebook but it looks fairly weak. Their systems MUST be breached?
"An unknown third party continues to use Sony’s name and referencing Sony websites without authorisation as part of a scam text message promotion in Ireland. The text messages seem to be sent to random mobile phone numbers and include references to ‘Free Give Away Madness’, ‘Contest circle’ or ‘Free Prize Giveaway’ amongst other things.
Sony Ireland is NOT running this nor any similar promotion and has not provided any prizes. We recommend that you do not respond to this promotion and disregard any text messages that you receive which refer to this type of activity. Please be assured that Sony has not provided your mobile telephone numbers to this third party nor have Sony’s systems been breached or in any way compromised.
We have already informed the relevant authorities in Ireland for further investigation and our security teams are taking immediate action to close down the websites which are referenced in the text messages and identify the source of the text messages."
All this sounded dodgy but that fact that I had indeed registered with Sony, and they had sent me a text made me go to the link where there's an 'innocent enough' shopping site.
This is all very worrying. It looks like Sony has been hacked somewhere and my phone number has been accessed. I found this response from SONY on facebook but it looks fairly weak. Their systems MUST be breached?
"An unknown third party continues to use Sony’s name and referencing Sony websites without authorisation as part of a scam text message promotion in Ireland. The text messages seem to be sent to random mobile phone numbers and include references to ‘Free Give Away Madness’, ‘Contest circle’ or ‘Free Prize Giveaway’ amongst other things.
Sony Ireland is NOT running this nor any similar promotion and has not provided any prizes. We recommend that you do not respond to this promotion and disregard any text messages that you receive which refer to this type of activity. Please be assured that Sony has not provided your mobile telephone numbers to this third party nor have Sony’s systems been breached or in any way compromised.
We have already informed the relevant authorities in Ireland for further investigation and our security teams are taking immediate action to close down the websites which are referenced in the text messages and identify the source of the text messages."