People who last week received a spam text message from a ‘Sergeant Elizabeth’ claiming to be from the US military – offering to give the receiver a parcel – were probably targeted at random.
“The sender does not necessarily need to have in hand a list of telephone numbers. Mobile telephone numbers can be generated automatically very easily as long as the format of numbers for a particular country (the number of digits and prefix) are known,” a police spokesman said.
Last week people took to social media to warn others to ignore a text message that reads: “I’m Sgt Elizabeth, an American soldier now in desert. We met some time ago. I’ve a parcel for you. Please email me: elizabeth@usarmy-military.com for details”.
Those who communicate with this sender would probably be asked to send money to cover costs to have the package released, the spokesman said.
Vodafone Malta, one of the main phone service operators, said the phone numbers were not obtained from any of its systems. Although a spokeswoman could not specify how the numbers were acquired, she said the likelihood was they were randomly generated through an automated system.
She said the company knew its customers were increasingly concerned about the protection of personal information.
Vodafone, she said, had a specialised fraud, risk and security team constantly reviewing and enhancing its technical, physical and managerial procedures and rules to protect personal data from unauthorised access, accidental loss or destruction. “We can confirm that there has been no breach of these systems,” she added.
A spokesman for service provider Go said that while the company took its responsibility for the security of customer information “extremely seriously”, its systems were continuously under review and it took all necessary precautions to prevent spam activity.
We can confirm there has been no breach of the systems protecting personal data
The spokesman, however, also reiterated that third parties were still able to send spam SMS through an automated system which went through a range of numbers, regardless of whether they existed.
The police spokesman said that irrespective of whether unsolicited messages were received by post, email, SMS or telephone, receivers should always question the aim behind them before engaging in any sort of communication.
Calling back or sending an SMS could be more expensive than expected if the number was premium-rated, while replying by email would open the door to more spam messages.
The Sgt Elizabeth message was a relatively straightforward scam usually associated with countries in Africa, but at first glance it appeared to have originated from an Irish telephone number.
“However, since it is possible to send an SMS through the internet, the international prefix may not necessarily indicate the sender’s actual location.
“The use of an Irish number may mean the sender is trying to give some more credibility to their communication, given that recipients would be less suspicious of messages seemingly originating from a European country,” he added.
“Given that recipients are nowadays very suspicious of messages originating from African countries, the claim that the message is from an American soldier is another attempt to make the message more credible.”
Although in some cases spam messages were just a nuisance, at other times the aim was to disseminate programmes that harmed one’s device or the first step in a fraudulent scam.
One thing a recipient could do is to look up the message online. A quick search would bring up several forum posts by people saying they have received similar messages. In fact, a word-by-word reproduction of the same message was posted last month, the police spokesman said.