What’s going on with this Wiko phone? Surcharged SMS are sent automatically, the costs land on the bills of mobile operators. What appears to be a news item could be a major scam.
What seems like a news item may not be one: a Wiko user shared his story on Twitter. He noticed, by consulting the consumption monitoring of his mobile plan, that several surcharged SMS messages appeared on his bills.
I told you that my phone @WikoMobile sent surcharged text messages to 61071 on its own?
Ben after a recommended, and while contesting for the form to be in any way responsible (LOL), #Wiko refunded my money…
Which didn’t even reimburse me for the recommended ? pic.twitter.com/fuEzzMq8Dg— ? Swami Petaramesh ⛱ ???? (@petaramesh) April 28, 2022
Premium SMS are sent by a basic phone, we are talking here about a Wiko F100. This phone is what is called a featured-phone, it only has basic functions (telephone, SMS, calls, etc.). It is sold for less than 20 euros, especially in supermarkets. It is also found at 13 euros on the Carrefour.fr site.
The phone that scams you
On sites like Signal-scams, we see that similar complaints are numerous and describe a very similar scenario. Each time, these are surcharged SMS sent automatically to the 61071. The problem comes from the same phone, the Wiko F100 or Logicom. These two telephones are strictly similar… It would be a program directly present in the software of these devices.
Wiko seems to be aware of the problem and does not hesitate to reimburse those who complain. Problem: the refund issued is lower than the cost of the registered letter sent.
Basically I had for 7.96€ of mail for 6.65€ of reimbursement.
A Pyrrhic victory ? pic.twitter.com/JYlvdKAHan— ? Swami Petaramesh ⛱ ???? (@petaramesh) April 28, 2022
Also, according to the user (Swâmi Petaramesh on Twitter), the brand denies being responsible for this issue.
We have contacted Wiko to get their point of view on this problem which affects many users and we are awaiting their official response. Is the manufacturer aware of a program that automatically takes money from mobile plan bills? Unfortunately, this kind of devices don’t have OTA function to update remotely. It will not be easy to stop the mechanism… unless you activate blocking options directly with your mobile operator.
Fraudulent SMS are unfortunately very numerous and target almost everyone, because a large number of people are not sufficiently aware of these dangers. Here are some practical tips…
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