Moscow authorities warned about SMS fraud under the guise of the “Million Prizes” campaign

From September 1, Muscovites who can take part in online voting in the elections began to receive codes for participation in the Million Prizes program. Fraudsters did not fail to take advantage of this and began to send fake messages and SMS. This was warned on the official website of the mayor of Moscow.

Unique codes that allow you to take part in the prize draw come in SMS messages. The mailing will last until September 7th. The authorities of the capital warn: only the Department of Information Technologies of the city of Moscow sends real SMS. At the same time, DIT_MOS appears in the “sender” field, and the message looks like this:

“Congratulations! To participate in the #ChooseTogether2022 campaign, you have been assigned a unique participant code — XXXX-XXXX-XX. This year, 100 cars and more than 600,000 prizes with a face value of 3,000 to 10,000 points will be drawn among the participants. The winners will be determined on September 10, 11 and 12, 2022. For more information, visit mos.ru/m/b8S22I. You can refuse to participate at the link: mos.ru/otkaz”.

Official chat bot shares are in Telegram. Here you can ask questions about participation in the Million Prizes program, about the prizes themselves and options for receiving them, about the timing of the event, and the like. To communicate with the bot, you will need to confirm your phone number linked to your Telegram account. It is important to remember that the chatbot is activated only when it receives a user request and does not create any automatic mailings.

So any messages not received from DIT_MOS are not related to the Million Prize promotion.

“In order not to become a victim of scammers, you should always pay attention to who the sender is and not open links that may arouse suspicion,” the city authorities warn.

Reference

All you need to do to redeem your unique code and be entered into the Million Prizes prize draw is to vote online in the elections that will take place from 9 to 11 September. The “Vote” button will appear in the voting section of mos.ru. Prize draws will be held from 10 to 12 September. Winning notification will be sent via SMS. Participants of the promotion can also check if their code has won on the website “Million Prize”.

Alena Bodrienko.

Photo by mobile reporter / Moskva Agency