AT&T, Cricket customers receive texts saying that they've consented to give data to third parties

Last week, we told you that for the second time in six months, AT&T said that it will stop selling its customers' real-time location data to location aggregators, who then sell this information to others. But some AT&T customers, and subscribers to its Cricket Wireless pre-paid unit, are receiving strange text messages. As they have reported on the AT&T forum and Reddit (via Android Police), these texts say "AT&T Free Message: Notice: Mobile line XXXXXXXXXX on your account has consented to share phone location or other subscriber, account, and device data with third parties. Please do not reply to this text. Thank you for choosing AT&T."

The problem with the text is that those who received it say that they never gave consent to share any information with third parties. One theory, that this is some type of phishing ploy, can be easily shot down because the text doesn't ask for any user information. Phishing is when you receive an email or text that appears to be from a company whose business you use, requesting some type of identification such as an account number or social security number. In reality, its a message from a scammer who will take that information and hijack your bank account, wireless account or brokerage account and clean you out, or make unauthorized changes.

Cricket told Android Police that it is working with AT&T to investigate the messages.