Bill Is Paid Here's A Little Gift For You
Bill Is Paid Here's A Little Gift For You - Text spam is on the rise. The latest version includes scammers who send you messages from your own phone number. Here's what to do as a member, you have 10 freebies to give away every month. Anyone can read what you share. A few weeks ago, I woke up in the morning to a text message on my smartphone.
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Bill Is Paid Here's A Little Gift For You
It wasn't my editor or a helpless friend from another time zone. It's a message from me. "Free message: Your bills are paid for March. Thanks, here's a little gift for you," read the text, showing me a web link from my own phone number.
Last month I received several such letters. In online forums, several Verizon customers have reported a similar experience. It was clear to me what was going on. Scammers used internet tools to manipulate the phone network to send me messages from a number they weren't actually texting.
This was the same technique used by robocallers to "spoof" phone calls as coming from a legitimate person, such as a neighbor. If I clicked on the web link, I would be asked for personal information such as a credit card number that a fraudster could use to commit fraud.
What Spam Text Looks Like
Consumers have struggled with cellphone spam for years, primarily in the form of robocalls from scammers to send fraudulent messages about late student loan payments, Internal Revenue Service audits and expired car warranties. Cellphone fraud has recently shifted more to text messaging, experts say. Spam messages are on the rise from all kinds of phone numbers – not just your own.
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11.6 billion scam messages were sent over US wireless networks in March, up 30 percent from February. According to an analysis by Teltech, which makes anti-spam tools for phones, it has outpaced robocalls, which grew by 20 percent over the same period. Verizon confirmed it was investigating the texting issue.
On Monday, it said the issue had been resolved. "We recently blocked the source of a text messaging scheme in which bad actors were sending fraudulent text messages to Verizon customers that purported to come from the recipient's own number," Verizon spokeswoman Adria Tomaszewski said.
Representatives for AT&T and T-Mobile said they have not seen a similar problem. But text spam affects all wireless customers, and carriers now offer online resources on how people can protect themselves and report spam. Text scams vary widely, but often you'll find them scrambling for your personal data with messages disguised as tracking updates for fake package deliveries, or information about health products and online banking.
What Spam Text Looks Like
Teltech says their rise stems in part from the fact that messaging is easier than ever. Additionally, industry-wide and government efforts to crack down on robocalls are prompting scammers to turn to text messages. "Fraudsters are always looking for the next big thing," said Julia Porter, vice president of Teltech.
Spam is growing faster than spam calls." Here's what to watch for with text scams — and what you can do. According to TelTech, the most common text scam is a message pretending to be a company providing shipping updates on packages such as UPS, FedEx or Amazon.
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Over the past week, I've received messages that a Samsung TV — a big-ticket item vying for my attention — is undeliverable. Another advertised an anti-aging skin cream. Another message offered about the benefits of a product that can cure brain fog. Watch out for these tell-tale signs of a scam text: Scam texts usually come from phone numbers with 10 or more digits.
Genuine commercial establishments usually send messages with four, five or six digits. The message contained misspelled words intended to bypass wireless carriers' spam filters. Links in scam texts often look strange. Instead of a traditional web link consisting of "www.websitename.com", they are web links containing words or phrases such as droppoundsketo.com.
How To Protect Yourself
This practice, known as URL masking, involves using a fake web link that takes you to another web address that asks for your personal information. First and foremost, do not click on any link or file in a suspicious message. Do not reply to any such message.
Even typing "pause" will show scammers that your phone number is active. To report fraudulent texts, AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile offer a single number to text to 7726. After forwarding, the carrier will ask for the phone number from which the message came. If the text spam is becoming overwhelming, spam-filtering apps like Teltech's TextKiller are there to help.
For $4 a month, the spam-blocking app scans messages from phone numbers not in your address book. If the text is detected as spam, it is filtered to a folder labeled "junk". Textkiller was perfect - maybe too perfect. It successfully caught five spam messages in five days, but it mistakenly filtered out two legitimate messages, including one from Verizon thanking me for reporting spam and one to an AT&T spokesperson.
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So I don't recommend paying $4 a month for this iPhone-only app, unless you can't stand spammy texts. Teltech said false positives occurred in rare cases for messages marked as spam, and customers could share feedback to train TextKiller's accuracy. A more practical solution is to use free tools to reduce the clutter caused by spam text.
Bottom Line
On iPhones, you can open the Settings app, tap Messages, and enable the “Filter Unknown Senders” option. This keeps messages from numbers not in your phonebook in a separate Messages folder. On an Android phone, you can open the Messages app and enter the spam message settings and enable "Block Unknown Senders".
Finally, both iPhone and Android devices include the ability to open settings in a message and block a specific number from contacting you. There's a lesson in this story: If we stop sharing our phone numbers with people we don't fully trust, we can help stop spam from flooding our phones.
This includes a cashier at a grocery store asking for our phone number to get a discount, or an app or website asking for our numbers when we sign up for an account. Who knows where our scores will end up once they're in the hands of dealers?
A better idea is to have a second set of digits that we consider a burner phone number, which we can all create with free Internet calling apps like Google Voice. That way, the next time a scammer tries to text you on their behalf, it won't come from your own number.