Text spam pretending to be from Sony

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Squonk

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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."
 
I also received this text message this morning. However, I haven't bought any Sony products recently. I did sign up for Bord Gais rewards during the week and gave them my telephone number. I doubt there is any link between these though. Best just to ignore all these kind of text messages or emails.
 
Squonk said:
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?
Click to expand...

Not at all.

They sent it to thousands of people. Some of them will have bought from Sony recently and their guard will be down. They will go to the site.

I had been talking to AIB about some issue on my account. Then they sent me an email. I was just about to click on the link when I realised that they don't communicate by email. But my guard was down.
 
I've received similar text messages purporting to be from Apple.

I don't own any Apple products, and what's more, the texts are sent to my work phone which I don't use as a contact number on any websites.

As Brendan said, they're just bombarding mobile numbers with these fake texts and hoping to hit on someone who might take it as genuine.
 
Yes, I have had the sony one a couple of times at this stage and a friend has had the apple one.
 
Sony's PlayStation Network was hacked last year, with a lot of customer data taken, but that made international headlines, and anyone impacted was contacted.

As others have said, this one is just a random piece of spam that coincided with you having recent contact with Sony.
 
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