Don't fall for text message scams like these

You may have seen texts like this one before.
It seems pretty obvious that it's a scam, but it pays to understand what the scammers are trying to achieve by sending messages like this.

First, they would love to add your email address to their spamming lists. They collect as many emails as possible and sell them to spammers around the world.

Secondly, if they can gather enough personal information about you it will assist a hacker in gaining access to your online services, like Facebook, online banking, email accounts and more.

Never ever ever give out your personal information to anyone over the phone or internet unless you 100% sure it is going to a trusted source.

Also beware of companies calling you to check on your service and doing "identity checks" to make sure they have the right person. If they have rung you, be careful about providing your date of birth or any other identifying information to the person on the other end of the line as you don't really know where they are calling from.