An SMS competition or SMS trivia scam usually arrives as a text message and may encourage you to enter a competition for a great prize (like an mp3 player). The message (or sometimes, an advertisement) could also invite you to take part in a trivia competition, with a great prize on offer if you answer a certain number of questions correctly.

The scammers make money by charging extremely high rates for the messages you send, and any further messages they send to you. These charges could be as high as $4 for each message sent and/or received.

With trivia scams, the first lot of questions will be very easy. This is meant to encourage you to keep playing. However, the last one or two questions that you need to answer to claim your ‘prize’ could be very difficult or impossible to answer correctly (and may even require you to guess a random number).

Warning signs

• You receive a text message offering you the chance to win a great prize by sending a return text to enter a competition.
• A text message tells you that you could win a great prize by participating in a trivia competition over SMS. The first message may even contain a very easy question to tempt you.
• The text message (or other advertisement) does not give you details about how to stop receiving more messages.
• The first text message, or the advertisement for the competition does not contain all the terms and conditions.

Hope that the above information will be helpful to you.
Cheers!
Patrick