Dear tellows friends,
We hope you had a wonderful start of 2020! As it is almost February, tellows would like to inform you about the latest phone fraud. Smishing, which is also known as SMS scam, has been raising concern in the US, as many reported that scammers sent endless text messages to trick them. Therefore, tellows also added a new caller type for you to choose from when reporting a spam call – the SMS Spam.
The following are the latest reports of SMS spam on tellows:
2134537692 | tellows score: 7
Reported by Toya on 26th Jan 2020:
‘Texted by this number saying I had four items being shipped by Amazon. I did not order anything from Amazon.’
3306356409 | tellows score: 8
Reported by Jim on 10th Jan 2020:
‘Caller sent several text msg offering $800 an hour to survey whole foods.’
2098725045 | tellows score: 8
Reported by Stephanie on 2nd Jan 2020:
‘Received this spam text, notice it includes a full name to entice user to click on the link: Congrats to 2 lucky users of our internet data! Today’s winners of iPhone 11 are: Nicole Maxwell and You STEVEN! Claim now s8xrz.info/VcypBef0eWQ’
Needless to say there are way more SMS scams happening in the mean time, and tellows also want you to stay away from this type of scam. There are several big warning flags of SMS spam:
Call to Action SMS
The third comment in the above is one of the examples of Call to Action SMS spam. Wording such as Claim now, Click on this link, Call or text back…… highly suggested that this SMS is a scam. Call to Action SMS message usually includes a link, email address, phone number etc. for you, please ignore this type of text message!
Job offer that are too good to be real
The second comment shows that a caller offered $800 an hour to survey whole foods! Again scammer are trying to scam people with too good to be real offers. Stay away from this type of scam!
The Shipping Scam
This one has been on the list for sometimes already. Scammers were calling victims to get their packages in the beginning, however, recently people started reporting that scammers are using text messages to trick people. The Shipping scam usually comes with a tracking code and redirect you to an well known e-commerce pages such as Amazon, victim would end up paying some very expensive items or services.
If you come across the above SMS scam, please don’t hesitate to report it to the FTC Do Not Call Registry or you can rate the number on tellows. We have added a new caller type recently, which is the SMS Spam for user to report unwanted text message. You can also try the tellows app for number look up and rating numbers!
tellows wishes you a nice weekend!
