Telco people behind text message scam?

Last August 26, another scam greeted me in the form of a text message from someone with SIM No. +639276887842. The message was: “kmsta na kau diyan? Ito na new roaming # ko d na kc mag active ung dti kung #. Ingat kau dyan, mis u all Godbles! txtbck. How are you there? This is my new roaming number as my old number can’t be activated anymore. Take care all of you there, miss you all, God bless! Text back” (end of quote). But the sender didn’t give any name.

When I checked my list of the SIM numbers of my daughters, sons and grandchildren who are abroad or in other parts of the country, there was no such number.

My daughter Buena, who is staying in Daet, advised me not to answer the text message. I surmised this must be similar to the text message I received a year ago from somebody who pretended to be a relative who had just arrived from Australia. He asked me to send him a prepaid load of P300, saying a classmate of his whom he met in Manila was asking for it. I can hardly believe the service provider does not know this modus operandi which is happening right under its very nose.

It is high time that the Department of Transportation and Communications investigated this scam that seeks to prey on, more or less, 22 million innocent cell phone owners throughout the country. Only telco personnel would know the active SIM numbers. It therefore stands to logic that some telco personnel might be “leaking” the subscribers’ numbers to unscrupulous outsiders. Let us not wait for President Aquino to issue an order to investigate this scam.

—GODOFREDO O. PETEZA SR.,
Barangay Camambugan,
Daet, Camarines Norte 4600