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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."
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Daiv on Tuesday March 25 2014, @07:47PM
SMS seems like a weird way to donate. If I'm sending my money somewhere, I take the time to pull up a web page and make sure it's legit. The people who can afford to donate by sending an SMS have to be a large cross section of people with smartphones. Smartphones that can pull up proper websites and donate that way.
If you're going to partake in SMS donations, double check your input or accept if your money went somewhere else, it's your fault.