Text Message Phishing

This scam came as a text message to Larry’s personal cell phone. He’s been very diligent about robo calls, blocking the numbers and reporting them, but this was a text message. You may not pick up a phone call, but if you check your text messages, you can’t help but read the beginning of the message, and the bad actors know it!

About three weeks earlier, Larry had replaced his broken phone. Then he received a text message with a link saying that our Verizon account was just charged $1,920 for the purchase of a new phone and the text included the exact model he chose. Right before he was ready to click the link he noticed the text originated from a Gmail account with a random name and that didn’t seem like something Verizon would send.

Many times we’ve warned not to click on links in email messages; now we have to extend that to text messages! Larry didn’t click this one, but it could have been something to gather personal info, install malware on the phone; who knows!

The FCC says robo calls have declined, but expect text message scams to increase.   Seems they’re adopting some aggressive regulations around these text scams. Mobile service providers may be required to help with these efforts. —CMW