Texting fraud is on the rise - what you need to know to stay safe:
Bottom Line: Text based fraud has been on the rise of late. The reason is pretty simple. Anytime there's a new way to execute an old scam people are more susceptible to fall for it. By now you've probably been spammed via text at a minimum. You've almost certainly been called by would be scammers. While call based scamming is still unfortunately highly successful, it requires more effort, people and time to pull off the fraud. Text based fraud is a lot more efficient and possibly effective for the fraudsters. Here are the most common types of fraud being attempted by text right now according to ESET Mobile Security:
- Banking
- IRS
- Lottery/sweepstakes
In other words the same types of fraud that are often emailed or called to attempt to get you to bite. Often there's a sense of urgency to attempt to get you to give up personal info before you're had time to really think about it. Words like urgent, important, next 10 minutes, etc. are commonly used to get you to react emotionally. You should handle text based fraud the same as you would on the phone. Never give personally identifying information if you didn't initiate the communication. If you're concerned it might be real, go online and find the legit contact information for the company/entity and reach out to them directly.
Up to this point most of us haven't worried about antivirus/spamming software for our mobile devices but that time might be coming to an end. Every major computer antivirus software company has a mobile version as well. They should ID and protect you from fraudulent texts and related spam should you choose to go that route.