Friday night, many Shawano residents received a suspicious text message to their phones, regarding a spam message from a CEO in China of a tractor and heavy equipment manufacturer.
The message claimed to offer a business opportunity that allowed 6 percent commission on sales for those willing to help establish communication with clients locally. Those who reportedly received the message have Cellcom as their wireless provider, but as noted the message is a scam.
“Definitely the tips would be don’t click on any of the links if you don’t know who it’s from. Delete it and check with the provider,” informed Tim, a worker at the Cellcom store in Shawano. “We were talking a little bit about it because I guess it was up on Shawano classifieds too, that people had seen the information out there. I think most people knew and flagged it as a scam when they had seen the links.”
The message came with a link to a website, but it’s recommended to never open links from senders you do not know because those websites could be malicious. Currently, it’s unknown just how the message was sent out, and why only to Cellcom users.
According to Tim, it’s possible that the scam came through based off of a phone number that hit the 715 area code and the first digits of 851. It could have then randomly filled in the remaining four numbers automatically by spamming users, but nothing has been confirmed.
If you received a message in this nature, you can also report it to the FCC because these scam attempts can affect all kinds of numbers and wireless carriers. Scammers are constantly finding new ways to circumvent systems in place to prevent these attempts, which is why it’s important to be alert of changing and new trends.