T-Mobile customers are receiving spam texts possibly related to August's data breach

On Reddit (via The T-Mo Report) several T-Mobile customers have been targeted by a scam so topical, it was ripped out of the headlines. Some T-Mobile subscribers were unable to use their connected devices yesterday as an outage affected the carrier's network. A clever ploy was quickly put together and a text disseminated that said, "We apologize for the temporary phone outage yesterday."

The text continues by noting that the person receiving it was "one of the 25,000 affected clients" belonging to the nation's second-largest carrier. The bogus message goes on to ask recipients of the text to take a 30-second survey about T-Mobile (note in the image how the company's name was written as Tmobile, something that the wireless provider would never do) in return for a free gift valued at $100.

Pressing the link takes you to a new page where at the bottom, the truth is finally revealed. Reading the small print reveals the information that the company behind the survey is a marketing website that is not "affiliated" with T-Mobile. On that page is a button that says "Accept." Don't press it even if you feel pressured by the countdown timer on the page. And note that the October 1st deadline has already passed.

The report notes that the massive data breach that revealed personal data from as many as 48 million T-Mobile customers might have been used to get the phone numbers needed to send the texts. This makes sense since only T-Mobile customers are receiving the texts. And as one Reddit user points out, now that the spammers know which phone numbers on their list are legit, they could put them up for sale at a premium price.

If you are a T-Mobile customer and have received this spam, you should forward it to T-Mobile at 7726.