Not content with tricking victims into giving up private identity information via email, phishers are increasingly turning to text messaging to scam account numbers, credit card numbers, social security numbers, and more from their targets.
One advantage that phishing by text message has is that while people are becoming increasingly wary of email messages exhorting them to log into an account, text message phishing is still relatively novel, and so people are more likely to fall for it.
And while text message phishes often contain a link on which the phisher wants you to click, cell phone phishing may be even more compelling when it asks you to call a number.
For example, this phishing text – from a real cell phone phishing effort that was making the rounds last week – has the potential to be very compelling, particularly if the person receiving it actually has an account at the referenced financial institution
“Central One FCU Alert: Your CARD has been DEACTIVATED. Please contact us at 508-744-3140 to REACTIVATE your CARD.”
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A call to the number lead to a voice menu with an option to punch in your credit card number to “reactivate your card”, where ‘reactivate your card’ of course really meant “give a scammer your credit card number.”
Fortunately, the same rule to protect yourself against email phishing applies here – if you get a text message (or email) asking you to visit your account online, or to call your financial institution or other organization with whom you do business, don’t click the link, or call the number in the text message.
Instead, contact the organization directly by typing in their website URL in your browser, or calling the number that you ordinarily use to call them. If, in fact, they are genuinely trying to contact you, you’ve lost nothing but the time it took you to type the address or punch in the ten numbers.
On the other hand, if it is a scam, you’ll have saved yourself untold dollars and hassle.
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just this week,two very real looking emails arrived to me,both whom I’m a customer with. I didn’t click the link,but forwarded them to the abuse department of the companies.They emailed me back,saying the emails were not from them and not to click onto any links. Thank goodness I had since enough not to. I cant believe the scams crooks use to get honest peoples money. I’m on disability and cant afford to be ripped off.