A DB Research text message which is being sent to many US people, claiming to be a survey.
The text asks whether you would re-elect President Trump if the election were held today.
This is is a scam. Don’t click on the link. If you do, you will be redirected to spam websites at best and phishing and malicious websites at worst.
This is how the text message looks like:
Hi, I’m Whitney from DB Research with a quick survey. Would you vote to re-elect President Trump if the election were held today? 1 No 2 Yes
What is DB Research?
David Binder Research (db-research.com) have been providing research and insight to political, government, and private sector clients for over 25 years.
The text message is not really sent from DB Research.
DB Research has released the following message to the public:
PLEASE READ: Recently, several individuals have contacted our company about a survey sent to their cell phones attributed to “DB Research.” THIS SOLICITATION IS NOT FROM OUR COMPANY.
We do not know who sent out those texts, but they did not come from David Binder Research. We advise anyone receiving this solicitation to disregard it. This is in no way affiliated with our company. This matter is being investigated.
The text message was reported to be sent by the following numbers:
- 2405948672
- 2723598274
- 3082448366
- 3125841703
- 3262224067
- 3303558406
- 4155321941
- 5312291482
- 5396664698
- 6202675375
- 7072895268
- 8053073422
- 8153968044
- 8153968099
- 8574198019
- 9705074972
What to do next?
Do not respond to the texts, and especially do not share sensitive personal or financial information by text.
Report texting scam attempts to your wireless service provider by forwarding unwanted texts to 7726 (or “SPAM”).
You can place your phone number on the National Do Not Call Registry.
These text messages may be illegal. According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC),
It’s illegal to send unsolicited commercial email messages to wireless devices, including cell phones and pagers unless the sender gets your permission first. It’s also illegal to send unsolicited text messages from an auto-dialer — equipment that stores and dials phone numbers using a random or sequential number generator.
To file a complaint with the FCC, click here.
If you wonder why you have received these emails, then you should consider that your email address (and perhaps other information as well) has been compromised in a data breach. To verify that, go to haveibeenpwned.com.