Spam Mail In My Pocket

So, I woke up this morning to discover that I had won a completely free $1000 gift card to Walmart! I try to suppress my giddiness at the prospect by only doing a mild jig in my jammies and strutting around my room singing, “Money” by Abba. The text (from a random, charitable stranger) told me to go to http://promodaygiveaway.com/walmart TO CLAIM MY PRIZE! All I needed to do was to input a simple validation code of “1000” to prove who I was (you know, the grand prize winner of windfalls) and it was as good as mine. Of course, it was required of me to input some measly factoids about my life. Email address, name and my cell phone number. While it was curious why they’d ask me about my cell phone number when they contacted me via cell phone, I figured that it must be some bureaucratic thing and happily input my information and I now patiently await my $1000 gift card (which I assume must be huge to fit all that money on there).
Of course, this is a fabrication. But all lies are built on a grain of truth. I did, in fact, receive an unsolicited text letting me know that I had won. Now, with my cynicism, it didn’t take any intensive research on deciding that this was, in fact, a scam. But, for the hell of it, I decided to see where this rabbit hole went. I followed the link given to me on my phone (you may notice, if you follow the link above, that it is now dead) and decided to enter in the code, because skepticism aside, I could really use $1000 from Walmart. And wouldn’t it suck if it turned out to be actually true and I turned it down because it seemed like a scam?
The site seemed fairly legit. But, that’s what scam artists want. What I mean by legit is that it wasn’t all text. They’d taken at least an hour to get the site presentable. Of course, the first tip off to me was that the Walmart logo was nowhere to be seen on this page, outside of the picture of the gift card. (This one to be exact)
I put in the code in the code in the allotted box, just under the ticking timer of 5:00 that was slowly ticking down. I wondered what would happen if I let it run out. But, I’m impatient in the mornings. (Just like in the evenings and afternoons and nights.) I was taken to another screen that asked me for my email address and name and cell phone number. At this point, any illusions that I might have had that this WASN’T a scam evaporated. Why would they need my cell phone number if they already texted me? And what, are they going to email me my gift card? While that’s not impossible, $1000 is a lot of cash to have just sitting around in a gmail account with nothing in return.
I went back to the validation code entry. I input 1337 and 9366 to see if they were valid codes. They were. (I would later find out with google investigation that other valid codes were “MART” “CARD” and basically any four lettered combination that exists in ASCII) I was rejected when I put in a simple ‘1’ though.
Then I caught “Privacy Policy” nestled at the bottom of the screen. This should be good, I thought. And it was.
By agreeing with their policy (which was inputting my personal data and hitting submit) I was agreeing that they could sell, brand, have sex with and then not call, my information to outside “clients” at no recompense to me. It also said that if I decided to “opt out” (there was a small box at the very very bottom of the screen, hidden, almost) that my cellphone number that I would input there (and it only asked for the cell phone number) could also be shared with their “clients”. But, it did say that this was to inform them that I wasn’t interested in sales pitches.
I didn’t actually put in my cell phone number in the opt out space. I probably should’ve. When you clicked that button, it took you to a blank screen with just a basic entry box and basic text: “Enter Cell Phone Number:”

So, that's what happened this morning.