October 20, 2010
By Donovan Jackson

There is a rather appalling hatchet-job of a supposedly ‘official’ document doing the rounds which sends a dire warning for all cellphone users. ‘Urgent Warning for From Cell C Vodacom & MTN’, it blares shrilly. In bright red text. That red text should get the alarm bells ringing, alright, to alert you not to a scam, but to a hoax.

The ‘Urgent Warning’, we discover, is that a fraudster will call you up, claim to be an ‘engineer’, and require that you dial #09 or #90 to test the line. Then, sinister things will purportedly happen. Invasion of the SIM card snatchers…yes, that’s right, if this happens, it will supposedly let someone ‘make calls on your account’.

Even worse, if your phone displays the word ‘XALAN’, DON’T ANSWER or something terrible might happen. OK, so maybe not terrible, but the hysterical letter says something about a virus. Xalan is, in fact, an open source software library.

Now, as scary as this may sound, let’s just consider a few things here. Would hardened criminals really go to all that trouble to make a few calls? Would doing so not leave a ready trace of who they had called at your expense? Would the network operators really not know about this, and if they did, would they not notify you, say, by an SMS direct to your phone? Or even better, a message on your statement?

Would the dire warning really come on a Photoshopped pdf which looks something like a kindergarten project?

No, no, no, no, no and no. Of course not.

The good news is that this is indeed a complete load of buncombe. Like many other hoaxes, this one exhibits some classical signs: it claims to be from someone in a position of authority (the Special Investigative Unit).  It makes a chillingly sinister and deliciously frightening (but impossible) claim. It plays into our psychy where we think ‘someone’ is out to get us. It exhorts everyone to send it on without delay, you’d be doing a favour to those who receive it…

And it’s completely untrue; read the story at Hoax Slayer, and note the date: 2007. Also note that the wording used in the hoax is exactly the same. Some regional details, such as the ‘authority’, a very bad SA government coat of arms and the addition of the names of the local cellular network operators have been shopped in…by what appears to be a rank amateur.

Why should you not circulate these sorts of stories? Because they waste time and cause unnecessary paranoia and hysteria in a society which is beset by more than it’s fare share of legitimate worries. Not only that, but you don’t want to appear foolish. Some advice that should apply universally: Before you forward, Google it!

Don’t fall prey to hoax sms’s either,  more about those here.

*We’re considering writing a movie script with this title. We thought of it first!