The Sony Ericsson Laptop Hoax

Posted on May 13th, 2009. Written by Rico.

I’ve received from at least three friends an email with the subject line “Free Laptop From Sony Ericsson”. It basically promises those who forward the email a free laptop, and contains this image:

free-laptop-from-sony-ericsson

The text reads:

Our main competitor, Nokia, is giving free mobile phones away on the Internet. Here at Ericsson we want to counter their offer. So we are giving our newest WAP-phones away as well.

All you have to do, is to forward this message to 8 friends. After two weeks delivery time, you will receive a Ericsson T18. If you forward it to 20 friends, you will receive the brand new Ericsson R320 WAP-phone. Just remember to send a copy to Anna.Swelund@ericsson.com – that is the only way we can see, that you forwarded the message.

Watch out, dear readers! Rely on your common sense:

Does Sony Ericsson sell SE-branded laptops?
If the “promotion” were true, how would Sony Ericsson keep track of who really sent 8 or 20 emails?

In any case, Hoax Slayer received word of this scam way back in March 2007. The site said it best: “No legitimate company is likely to engage in such a haphazard and uncontrollable method of promoting their products.”

So, if you receive such an email, warn the person who sent it to you that it is a scam. It’s so easy to fall for offers that sound too good to be true—God knows that’s happened to me several times. But thanks to the internet, it’s easier than ever to find out about these.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 13th, 2009 at 7:30 am and is filed under Analysis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Rico

Rico Mossesgeld is the founding editor of Technograph. Learn more about him at rico.mossesgeld.com/about.

http://www.glennong.com Glenn

I also got about 4 of this. Common sense, hehe.
http://lordartworks.com/ L.A

I also got this from 2 person’s I know online. I immediately e-mail them about an article regarding it.
http://ozarcilla.multiply.com Michael Arcilla

One more thing. This hoax started going around in the NINETIES, for heaven’s sake. The “laptop models” quoted as T18 and R320 are… cellphones. I should know, I owned both models.

How lazy. They just swapped the word “phone” for “laptop” and made a cheap graphic.
http://technogra.ph Rico

Glenn: Let’s educate people who send this to us!

L.A: Exactly what we should do, good job!

Michael Arcilla: Yup, Ericsson even released a statement calling the offer a hoax when that happened!
http://cheftonio.blogspot.com cheftonio

Yeah! We need to confirm what we spread!

I hate chain e-mails! Send this to 10 of your friends and you will…

just kidding

-cheftonio
charlie the man

it is unfortunate however that when we heard about the words free, it is basically tantamount to recalcitrant attitude of what ever it takes, i will take it. a lots of people are keeping some poignant tales of the same story and yet they are still the victim of a quagmire of deception. learning is sometimes an elusive issue that somehow tend to wayward the enigmatic scenario of the fictional situation. thats the reality of certain stupidity.
2cents

Hmm. recieve this as well. If i am not wrong T18 and R320 are some cellphone models back in the 90s by ericsson. It was still ericsson then, not even sony ericsson.
Azza

Is this actually dangerous is anyway? My virus checker didn’t pick up anything.
- http://technogra.ph Rico
  
  Not really. But do you want people wasting time passing a meaningless email to their contacts, making use of network resource unnecessarily?
Ricollette

I would be more concerned that the address everyone is CCing is actually receiving these messages with everyones email address and creating an address list with which to send even more crap mail.