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posted by LaminatorX on Tuesday March 25 2014, @05:48PM   Printer-friendly
from the so-simple-an-idiot-could-do-it dept.

lhsi writes:

"It has been discovered that some people have been accidentally donating money to a different charity than they intended by using the wrong SMS keyword. In the last few days, a lot of donations have been made to the Cancer Research UK charity, however some have accidentally been made to Unicef instead where mobile users sent a text with the message "DONATE" instead of "BEAT" to a specific shortcode.

Unicef has said, "We contacted Cancer Research [UK] as soon as we became aware of what was happening. Unicef and Cancer Research [UK] have agreed that these donations will be received in full by Cancer Research [UK]."

Even knowing which word to use didn't help some people as their smartphone auto-corrected "BEAT" to "BEAR", and they were subsequently sent information about adopting a polar bear from the WWF."

 
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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by EvilSS on Tuesday March 25 2014, @05:59PM

    by EvilSS (1456) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 25 2014, @05:59PM (#21092)

    So, um, be more careful next time?
     
    Is this some sort of "slow news day" feature test or something?

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by GungnirSniper on Tuesday March 25 2014, @06:09PM

    by GungnirSniper (1671) on Tuesday March 25 2014, @06:09PM (#21096) Journal

    If it can happen accidentally, scammers will find a way to take advantage. From Yahoo: [yahoo.com]

    In less than two months after Hurricane Katrina, federal and state officials discovered scams such as a self-proclaimed white supremacist had set up fake online "charities" such as "neworleanscharities.com" allegedly to aid Katrina victims.

    It's not quite the same, but similar to registering a scam SMS code to steal from a real charity.

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by isostatic on Tuesday March 25 2014, @06:13PM

    by isostatic (365) on Tuesday March 25 2014, @06:13PM (#21099) Journal

    Have you submitted something better today?

    • (Score: 2, Funny) by EvilSS on Tuesday March 25 2014, @06:31PM

      by EvilSS (1456) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 25 2014, @06:31PM (#21107)

      Well I do have this doozie of an article on how people sometimes send the wrong check to the wrong utility.

    • (Score: 3) by Lagg on Tuesday March 25 2014, @06:40PM

      by Lagg (105) on Tuesday March 25 2014, @06:40PM (#21114) Homepage Journal
      This needs repeating. Yes it sounds like a smartass comment but it's not. If you want the site to give better articles. Send them.
      --
      http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿