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In July, savvy Reddit users noticed a strange pattern among recent winners of T-Mobile’s “T-Mobile Tuesday” contest. A disproportionate number of the audience winners were in the small township of Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania.
Through the T-Mobile Tuesday program, the carrier offers occasional giveaways with prizes that often include gift cards, tech gadgets, and vacations. Contests are free and you don’t have to be a T-Mobile customer (although you must be a US resident).
One user noted that since the program started in 2018, there have been 24 Chadds Ford winners out of 3,700 residents in total. In contrast, they counted 14 New York winners out of 8.3 million people, 25 Los Angeles winners out of 4 million people, and 22 Chicago winners out of 2.7 million people. In a raffle in May that resulted in nearly 100 $ 100 gift cards up for grabs, 15 “winners” appear to be from the city of Pennsylvania.
“I need to open a PO Box in Chadds Ford,” one user noted.
The mystery is no longer. T-Mobile has confirmed to CNBC that “the high number of Chadds Ford winners was linked to robots submitting multiple entries.”
The publication notes that the robots appear to have had an impact on “a relatively small amount” of actual prices.
Still, the incident is a fun reminder of how easily crooks can play big giveaways. By CNBC, an amateur hacker could easily deploy bots to fill out fields on T-Mobile’s entry form, using the scammer’s own Chadds Ford address. “The tools that help carry out this type of activity are widely available.”
T-Mobile told CNBC it has implemented additional security measures to prevent the problem from recurring.
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