Last Updated on: 16th October 2016, 08:46 am
I got a weird text on my cellphone from 1291. It said
Rogers Svc MSG: Reply help to make a $5.00 donation in support of earthquake victims in Haiti. Rogers is passing through 100% of donations collected.
That was it.
Immediately, I became suspicious. Who was 1291? How did I know it was from Rogers? I knew it said it was a service message, but how could I be sure? I had heard of other ways to donate via text message, but usually you have to initiate contact. They don’t come looking for you. Spammers have exploited people’s good intentions before when Hurricane Katrina happened, and look what happened to me when I tried to google information about Haiti relief efforts. Plus, viruses have spoofed support addresses from ISP’s, so seeing that it’s a service message means exactly nothing. Add to this that they never said what charity was receiving the money, and the scammometer was going off the scale.
It appears that it is true. I could have googled it, but once bitten, twice shy. I picked up my phone and called Rogers, and heard it from a rep there. Apparently they are teaming up with the ONEXONE foundation and the foundation is spreading the dough around to various charities. They are sending out this message in bulk. So if you get the message and it’s from that number, it’s likely safe.
I think it’s cool that they’re doing this, but they could have taken a couple of steps to make the message have less of a scammy feel. I know messages are short, but I’m sure they could have crammed a link in there to the page on their site where this program is explained, and they could have mentioned ONEXONE in the message.
This was a bitch to google out once I knew it was legit. I hope this post helps people find the necessary information.
