无忧短视频

Back to News & Events
article

The Penny Hoarder: I鈥檓 an Idiot. Don鈥檛 Fall for the Phishing Scam I Just Fell for

I feel like a fool. After years of occasionally writing articles about scams and fraud, I fell for a simple phishing scam on my cell phone. I gave up my debit card information to a scammer 鈥 possibly one based in the tiny European nation of Montenegro.

It happened like this: Two days after I mailed a package, I got a text message saying the package was undeliverable. A link took me to an official-looking Postal Service website where I was prompted to enter a card number to 鈥渞e-mail鈥 the package.

I typed in my personal financial information, even though in retrospect I obviously should have known better.

This experience left me with two burning questions:

How did these scammers know I had sent a package in the mail?

Is this something that other people should be worried about? How should they handle it?

So I spoke with a bunch of online security experts. They disagreed about whether the scammers actually knew I had mailed a package.

But they all agreed on one thing: This kind of phone texting scam is becoming increasingly common. People need to watch out, the experts say, because the problem is only likely to get worse.