SMS contest fiasco exposed
June 24 2009 at 06:45AM
By Angelique Serrao
What are the odds? This question is particularly pertinent for a quiz-based competition run by MTN where winners, it is alleged, know exactly how many smses to send in order to win a vehicle.
The MTN15 competition was run to celebrate the company's 15th birthday, and users were asked to subscribe to the competition at R7,50 an sms. The person who sends in the most correct-answer smses can win laptops, a car and finally a R1-million house bond.
According to a source, whose identity is known to The Star, winners who have walked away with a Toyota Fortuner knew exactly how many smses they needed to send to win the vehicle. MTN has denied the allegations.
MTN SA general manager Donovan Smith said they viewed the matter raised by The Star in a very serious light and had commissioned a forensic investigation to investigate the matter and audit the competition.
MTN SA general manager Donovan Smith said they viewed the matter raised by The Star in a very serious light and had commissioned a forensic investigation to investigate the matter and audit the competition.
"In our audit, all areas came out clean," said Smith. "This competition is clean and is valuable to our customers, and as such we have no reason to consider removing it."
The source said he was in a public place when he overheard an acquaintance talking on a Friday about how he was going to win a car that Sunday. The man told a group of people that someone had given him the source code and he was able to see people's rankings on a URL, so he knew how many smses he needed to send to win.
He knew he was 60 000 points ahead of other competitors. The man also said the previous winners knew each other and had shared the information.
The man spent R50 000 to win the R375 700 Toyota Fortuner. He won the car that Sunday.
"When I heard, I started to look into the competition, and many of the winners did seem to be linked," said the source.
"I thought the whole thing was unethical. How would people feel if they knew there was no way they could win a competition they were spending thousands of rands on because a syndicate of people know they will win."
The source said that even though MTN15 rules claim the game is one of "substantial skill", the man said that when he smsed, he did not wait for the reply to the question to see if it was correct; he kept on sending smses, as the more he sent, the more bonus points he received on every correct answer.
The Star tested this and found that bonus points accumulated on the amount of smses sent - even for wrong answers - but contestants were given them only when they got the next answer right.
The Star is in possession of a URL that lets you see the ranking of the person whose cellphone number you enter. When we started working on the story, the URL was still public.
After The Star sent MTN questions about the existence of this URL, MTN spokesperson Bridget Bhengu said there was no URL for this purpose.
Bhengu said contestants would be able to see their ranking only if they phone the call centre and the agent then smses his ranking to him.
"There is no active URL that contestants can access to check their ranking. There is also no active URL for participants to use to see how other participants are doing," Bhengu said.
On Saturday, the day after questions were sent to MTN, the URL could no longer be viewed, but Java scripts indicating its existence could be seen.
This week, at a meeting with The Star, MTN admitted the URL had been available on their internet site until May 12, when the link was removed.
Shaun van Coller, from IT Crimes, said the "get ranking" URL, which allowed people to see the ranking of any cellphone number you type in, was definitely in existence.
"I think a permission mishap happened and someone figured this out to see the rankings. They didn't lock up the source code - so outsiders could see it.
"Somebody, and it would definitely be internal at MTN, could have slipped up, and it was negligence. If someone did it deliberately, then it could be fraud," Van Coller said.
MTN had outsourced this competition to the Greek-based company Going Up and its South African partners, Key Cubed Solutions and Multi-media Solutions. Going Up has said it was not possible for anyone to see other people's rankings and would have been alerted if any unauthorised access had taken place.
On investigation, The Star found that many winners did know each other, and were friends on Facebook, work colleagues or spouses.
The winner on May 31, for instance, Dimitri Nicolakos, is friends on Facebook with Anelda Smalberger, project manager at Key Cubed Solutions.
Key Cubed told The Star that it had investigated Smalberger's relationship with Nicolakos and found it to be above board. They said Nicolakos was constantly calling in to ask questions about the competition. Smalberger made him a friend on Facebook to help facilitate those queries, they said.
Nicolakos said he knew nothing about a URL and could not view other people's rankings. He said his friendship with Smalberger meant nothing as he was "very friendly with lots of people at MTN".
Another winner of a car was Andrew Warburton, whose wife won a laptop under her maiden name, E le Roux.
When asked about his wife winning the computer, he said: "Anyone who has an MTN contract is eligible to play. She hasn't won the car, and we are trying for her to win too."
MTN said people often entered competitions as syndicates and there was nothing untoward about this.
The National Lottery Board is investigating the competition, which runs until August 9.
