Woolworths Whatsapp Survey Scam is Hitting South Africans
Can you live without Whatsapp? Hardly anyone can these days but Scammers like with everything else available to them online these days have also taken to using Whatsapp to scam people out of money or personal information. A new Woolworth Whatsapp Survey scam is now doing the round in South Africa and consumers are cautioned to be aware of this one.
The Media and Woolworths Respond
According to a Sunday Times Report, journalists cannot survive without their smart phones and whatsapp, it’s their lifeline to getting news fast and getting to locations to report on it. The Sunday Times detailed how its journalists and readers have been bombarded with fake SMS marketing campaigns in recent weeks, designed to scam recipients out of money.
According to the popular South African IT web site Mybroadband:
One of the fake whatsapp campaigns doing the rounds is a customer survey being “conducted by Woolworths”, the Woolworths Whatsapp Survey has been circulated on WhatsApp, Twitter, and Facebook, stated the report.
“There are several versions of the Woolworths Whatsapp survey, the latest being a request to complete it, share the link with 10 people, and provide personal details in return for a R6,500 store voucher.”
Another version includes a chance to win a voucher, with a R7-a-day subscription hidden in the fine print after you enter your cellphone number.
Woolworths said the survey is a scam and must be ignored, and that it will never request customer details via email or SMS.
“From a social media perspective, we track scam complaints and escalate them immediately to our social customer care team which responds to every social mention we can find with an explanation and the link to the caution on our website,” said Woolworths.
Consumers must be alert at all times
Consumers must please always be alert with applications like Whatsapp. Most scam messages like this are sent to a friend of yours who then sends it to you and 500 of his other friends and just because it came from him you believe it. Do not trust anything you see that seems too good to be true, because 100% of the time it is too good to be true.
If ever in doubt subscribe to notifications on this web site and even call a company like Woolworths if you receive a phishy whatsapp or sms message and they will quickly tell you it does not come from them. Stay alert people !!!