BestBuy.Com

[chizzy]

Your not fooling anyone.

[Area51Kev Regular Contributor]

                                                        

[hydrogenwv]

So, chizzy, buddy, pal...

  Explain to me how Best Buy gave away my mobile number when THEY DON'T HAVE MY MOBILE NUMBER? Please. Entertain me.

[Lora]

I also received a text today for the 1000 gift card.  It came from 206-618-1873 (a number from Seattle WA), directing me to go to website {removed per forum guidelines} . It uses the Best Buy logo, and even has a SSL Secured Site emblem. 

I don't believe it's Best Buy selling info.  Scammers send these texts to random numbers hoping someone will bite.  I get texts like this from other places at least once a month, the most frequent advertising that I could be a "Secret Shopper".  The only thing you can really do is to ignore them.

[drjlbailey]

I just received this text and I haven't been to a Best Buy since October of last year.  Not because I don't like or trust Best Buy but because I've been too busy to go anywhere.   As part of my job I do a lot of security research and it is highly unlikely that Best Buy, in this case, is the source of these attacks.  Since the attacks are coming from different numbers, it is much more likely that there is a script for an automated "bot" that texts multiple cells that is being downloaded by "script kiddies" who are firing it up and activating it to see how much profit they can make.  There is huge profit if they can steal the identity of even a small percentage of individuals.  Best Buy has a daunting task in trying to track this down and stop it.  The best defense is probably an awareness campaign to alert the population (perhaps send a text message to every phone) to warn them to ignore any text coming in along this line because it is fraudulent. 

[Kstephens99]

I am on the side of the conspiracy theory. I made a purchase from Best Buy site to store last week and picked it up today. While picking it up the staff warned me I would probably receive a text about $1000 gift card and to ignore it. Sure enough 5 hours later I received the scam text to the cell phone I used for the order. This all seems a little to coincidental to me to rule out Best Buy's system security being suspect. Before you attack me based on other replies in this thread let me put in my two cents on them. First of all I am in no way saying Best Buy is involved in this obvious phishing message. What I do believe is that their systems may be compromised in a way that the scammers are exploiting to better time their phishing emails. I base this theory on the time frames between a Best Buy order and the text messages. Think about it, if you have a giant list of numbers to randomly text, but you have one you know just visited Best Buy wouldn't you code the bot to prioritize the new order numbers. Some of the posts are professing that Best Buy couldn't possibly be compromised because they never provided their cell number to Best Buy but got the text. This is proof of nothing. The scammers are most likely working with a large set of numbers harvested from multiple sources or war dialing numbers. I am suggesting that they are ALSO harvesting numbers from Best Buy. I will reiterate that the short time periods between ordering from Best Buy and getting the text leaves me very suspect that Best Buy's ordering process may be compromised. The argument claiming Best Buy couldn't be compromised because people are NOT receiving the text is just as false. We don't have any knowledge of what has been compromised. Maybe it is just the site to store process or recent orders, etc. Without that knowledge we can not make the assumption that the scammers have all of the Best Buy customers information or none at all. These things are not that black and white. In addition we have no idea how large the data set being used by the phishing bot is. Assuming the bot can't stay alive long before being detected maybe it is never making it to the bottom of the list where those numbers are. Maybe the scammers are purposely filtering out a subset of numbers so as not to point all the blame at any one exploit. The point is there are too many unknowns to use the lack of a text as confirmation of no exploit. My point for rambling this long is that I am very concerned about my data. I would feel better knowing that Best Buy is taking this serious and actively looking for a potential exploit. The plausible deniability of the arguments put forth in this thread is the reason that a lot of companies let exploits continue longer than they should. Companies get hacked, it is the nature of the Internet, but as a company you have a responsibility to your customers by being paranoid and looking at the issue as if your ARE part of the problem.

[Jimmienomam]

Lol me, my wife, my Pastor and majority of my friends have all received this text message. No one but myself has shopped at BBY.

Likewise I just got a call (in Spanish) telling me I won $500 and all I had to do was call a certain number and give them my info to which they would send me a check.

Oh and last month I got a $100 GC text from Walmart.

Google is your friend when getting this stuff.

[cacheux]

Got a text today, want to contribute the phone number from the sender and the link that I never open in my iphone, after finding this forum.

Text comes from phone number: +1 (915) 227-0938

Text reads: Congratulations, you entry in last months drawing won you a FREE $1000 BestBuy Giftcard! Enter "WON" AT{removed per forum guidelines} to tell us where to ship it.

[RealGeorgeW Emerging Expert]

@cacheux

Forward the text to 7726 to report it to your carrier

@EVERYONE : STOP POSTING THE LINKS TO A POTENTIALLY MALICIOUS WEBSITE.

[hydrogenwv]

George - Maybe I'm a little unscrupulous, but if people are clicking on links in these messages and giving information, despite the fact that this whole thread is about scams, then, in my opinion, they are kind of asking for it.. lol.

  But, yes... don't post the links, as it is against forum rules... and you could be indirectly causing someone to get scammed.