PSA: Watch out for scammers offering to buy Honor 20, Honor 20 Pro, & Honor View 20 at crazy prices

Smartphone technology keeps growing with every passing year. The result of this is that it also opens new doors for the ever-increasing cases of mobile phone scams.

Depending on the magnitude of the scams, target persons could lose anywhere between a few dollars and a small fortune. One recent example is the scam that involved buying and/or selling Galaxy S10 Fortnite iKONIK skin, as seen below.

Since smartphones are now part and parcel of our daily lives, getting to know about these scams is inevitable for anyone who values their security and privacy.

The latest mobile scam is targeting owners of Huawei Honor 20, Honor 20 Pro and Honor View 20. Apparently, scammers are offering to buy any of the three devices at ridiculous prices of up to $800 – that’s nearly twice the RRP of the Honor View 20, for instance.

Just a quick warning, recently a number of new accounts have been targeting Honor 20, Honor 20 Pro, and Honor View 20 owners by sending them unsolicited DMs offering to purchase their phone or the build.prop* file for more than double the original value of the device. THIS IS A SCAM. The user is likely intending to use the phone to claim certain in-game promotional items without actually paying.
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Yes they are all fake. I have been ignoring such messages on xda, Facebook and Instagram for codes which they asly in terms of some help or some help with issue and thinks users are fool to be trapped in their scams but in fact people are smarter than they think.
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The Honor View 20 comes priced at about $600 when brand new and sealed. For someone to part with a tune of up to $800 for a second-hand version of the same device should be a warning sign that something isn’t right about the deal.

Even more interesting is that for those not interested in selling their Honor View 20 or either Honor 20 model, the scammers are asking to buy the build.prop file at $80. Given that some users may feel they have nothing to lose in sharing this file, passing the $80 offer may not be on the cards.

If you choose to engage the scammers, there will be either of these two outcomes:

1. They will insist that you send your phone to them first before they pay, but once they receive your phone they never pay up.
2. They will pay you, but then use PayPal to force a chargeback and reclaim their payment even if you legitimately send them the phone.

You might be wondering why someone would want to pay $80 for your build.prop file. Well, a while back it was claimed that the file has unique serial numbers that could be used to spoof a phone and claim promotional stuff without the consent of device owners.

But this isn’t it since the build.prop only contains system configurations and hardware model numbers – information that isn’t useful for any scammer looking to redeem stuff from the Huawei AppGallery without the consent of the device owner.

With regards to why people are so interested in the build.prop file, at some point there may have been a rumour that the file contained unique device serial numbers that could be used to spoof someone’s device and claim promotional items without their consent. However, this appeared to be a false claim because the build.prop only contains system configurations and hardware model numbers, neither of which can be used for AppGallery redemptions. Sadly, it doesn’t seem to have stopped these people from continually begging for the file. You also need root access to read/overwrite this file so if anyone tells you that they need your file to “repair” theirs, it’s likely a lie.
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So, there you have it, folks! Beware of these Honor View 20, Honor 20 and Honor 20 Pro scammers that are on the prowl to avoid becoming one of their victims.

NOTE: You can catch up with more Honor-related coverage via this link.

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