I have not seen this text on my FreeUp sim, but oddly enough, I DID receive it on my RedPocket (ATT) sim today.
I checked our 2 lines, and no emails there. Getting the same email on 3 lines is worrisome.
(Edit: my mistake-- ajzwilli confirms below that the messages were received via text, not email. I haven't received similar texts on our lines, either.)
For clarity, I received a text from AT&T Prepaid (it was from 11113000). I've sent in a request to FU support. I still have service so far. The link in the text is legit and is to a prepaid login site for AT&T. (m.att.com/my/#/login)
Thanks, ajzwilli and drysun! Taken together, this looks more like an error on AT&T's part, since the lines reported are on more than one MVNO.
I see that someone on the Reddit/Red Pocket subforum is thinking this may be AT&T encouraging customers to set up PINs due to heightened concern about security, and possibly not filtering their contacts/customers.
I intended to visit the FreeUP site today, but clicked on the saved link for the FreeUP Billaway site instead-- which redirected me to
https://billawayglobal.com/
Nothing at all related to FreeUP, but that page does have some description of their new 3rd-party rewards program concept--Billaway Sharego Keyboard. (At least it's new to me.)
You download a keyboard for your phone, and use it by default. It imbeds advertising to each person you message via sms or email.
I hope that doesn't catch on. Viewing ads on my own volition is one thing, but receiving them in text messages from friends would be irritating.
What next ? Perhaps an advert at the bottom of each of our posts...
I absolutely agree with you in principle, in the context of a slippery slope, and because I think the possibility for the ads being something the sender would never endorse would be a huge problem.
All that being said, if they were as unobtrusive as those things some email clients add by default as a signature like "Sent from my Padfone using Dan's Awesome Mail Program" with the name linking to the product page, except instead something like "Message sponsored by Billaway Typing on behalf of Dan's Awesome Manicurist's Products" with links to both the keyboard and the advertiser...well, for one thing I don't think it would work very well and they wouldn't stick to it (hence slippery slope), and for another it wouldn't really bother me to GET those any more than it does to see "sent using Inbox by Google" or whatever.
Personal opinion.