The United States Postal Service is warning of a scam involving text messages that ask for information in order for a package to be delivered.
They’re only like 18mo late on this one. So far I’ve seen USPS, FedEx, DHL and UPS flavors of this scam.
I love how mine would get progressively more broken in English. Each day a new text with a new link and more failed grammar. Thankfully they gave up after a week.
There is probably a reason for this, the carriers start blocking these, so they have to break the words so they bypass those blocks.
We had these in Finland two years ago, it originates probably from Russia, so we are their sandbox for these kind of cyber shit. Our carriers found out some way to block them and they are not anymore happening. One day our cyber security center just informed that they have co-operated with carriers to block them permanently. I believe the technique is not made public.
Edit: did some digging, so it was keyword based blocking in the network + Europol raided the servers which commanded the malware
Your screenshot is showing texts screened by the Google Messages app. Nothing to do with Verizon.
I’ve gotten like 4 of these, and it’s honestly surprising to me that anyone with more than a dozen brain cells falls for these scams, since they’re comically obvious.
So yeah I guess that actually accounts for like a good third or so of the country.
They know that there will be a certain number of the population that will see these attempts as obvious. Those texts aren’t meant for us. They’re meant for the elderly and less savvy.
You’ve got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know… morons.
Well, you say that but coincidentally I was expecting a parcel from a courier and received a well crafted text saying that delivery attempt failed.
It’s easy to fall into a trap like this. It was only when I paused wondering why are they asking for my address did I realise its a scam.
It was sent at 8:30, right during personal rush hour time.
Same here. My teen ordered something that was supposed to arrive this coming weekend. However it arrived early by USPS and the first I learned about it was when he got that scam text. I told him it looked like a scam, but I checked the real tracking number and the package was delivered.
I wonder if they have a data source for real deliveries to target - the online store did use some third party tracker that I accidentally clicked on before going to USPS
Honestly, this is just an unfortunate artifact of the ubiquitous nature of technology these days, and the fact that most people don’t think too hard about what’s actually happening or how this crazy amalgamation of information and services operates, and simply consider it “convenient magic”.
I got a really believable scam text a couple of weeks ago from a purported collection agency. I’m having some debt issues and it looked very real. The fact that they didn’t say my name or who they represented were obvious clues, but I could definitely see myself not thinking about that and downloading their attached PDF.
I’ve been getting these for ages now… UPS, USPS, endless scam texts all the time!
