Did you get a text saying that you owe unpaid toll fees? It’s probably a scam.
Authorities across the United States are warning about a wave of scam text messages that claim the person receiving the message has unpaid fees. The real goal of the scam is to give the criminals access to your bank account information, police say.
The text messages are the latest phishing scam targeting victims across the country, according to the Federal Trade Commission.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a warning that the text messages usually contain a link designed to “deceive drivers into entering banking or credit card information into a website.”
“Scammers have become skilled at imitating legitimate companies, sometimes even linking to legitimate websites,” Bonta said in a statement. “Text-based toll charge scams are prevalent right now and knowing what to look for can keep consumers safe against these tactics.”
Bonta said that scam texts in California may claim to come from the state’s toll payment service, FastTrak. One scam text message reviewed by Business Insider claimed to be from Massachusetts’ EZdriveMA toll service.
Both state services, EZdriveMA and FastTrak, say they do not send text messages to non-account holders to collect toll payments.
Authorities say the best way to avoid becoming a victim of these fake toll text messages is not to click on the link provided in the message.
Clicking on the link could expose your personal information, such as a driver’s license number, to the scammers and put you at risk of identity theft.
The FTC also recommends checking where suspicious messages may come from to see if the source is legitimate and forward scam messages to 7726 (SPAM) to report them as junk mail.
The Better Business Bureau told Business Insider last month that a similar scam text campaign impersonating the US Postal Service was one of the largest scams the organization saw during the holiday season.
Melanie McGovern, BBB director of public relations, also told BI that the best method to spot a phishing scam is to check from where the text or email came. Scam text messages from the USPS scam last month and the toll collection scam viewed by Business Insider had area codes of +63, originating in the Philippines.
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