 Like millions of other Americans, we are receiving text messages telling us that someone at a company’s HR department has noticed our very impressive resume and would like to discuss a job offer, call before the job’s filled! – or, we have an unpaid highway toll and must pay quickly to avoid a fine! – or, our package delivery has hit a snafu and we need to deal with it post haste, or it might get lost forever! The FBI advises us to delete such texts and to never – as in NEVER!!! – click through them. Such messages aim to persuade you to add to the hundreds of millions of dollars Americans are losing to text scams every year from sophisticated gangs in China. As Americans become wary of these smishing scams (a portmanteau of “SMS” short-message service texts and “phishing”), criminals are becoming more sophisticated, often impersonating a credible brand or agency to make you think that you must provide your credentials, account numbers, Social Security number, or make a payment in order to avoid a severe penalty. And if you do click through, you may also expose your phone to a malware infection that will endanger you long after the text is forgotten. One telltale sign of a smishing scam is that the link points to a foreign top-level domain. Common ones are “com-track,” and “com-toll.” But China’s smishing gangs are getting good at embedding links in actual “.com” addresses for real brands and agencies. So always assume it is a scam. What should you do if you receive such a suspicious text? The FBI advises: “STOP! Take a moment to breathe deeply in and out.” Again, NEVER!!! open the text. Write down the issue on paper and delete the text. And if you still have a tingle of doubt, go online and look up the main website and customer service number of the bank, delivery company, toll authority, or whatever, and ask them. But you do have an impressive resume, by the way. Click here to learn more. Comments are closed.
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