We live in the Boy Who Cried Wolf era of communication. Many of the messages we receive via email or text are from scammers trying to lure us into their cons with fake financial emergencies.
We add suspicious emailers to our block lists and delete texts demanding cash for an overdue bill, and then move on with our lives, hoping it wasn’t an honest company asking for real money that we owe them.
That, unfortunately, is what happened to a 47-year-old Californian named Ashley. As reported by USA Today, Ashley is an average person living in an era where every phone ring or buzz is a little jump scare. A text reminding you to pay a bill could be legitimate, but we’ve all been overwhelmed with scams that have programmed us to ignore them.
Ashley kept receiving texts that appeared to be obvious scams: low-balance warnings from something calling itself “The Toll Roads.” They had links to “pay now,” came out of nowhere, and sounded like any of the several phishing attempts we all get texted and emailed directly to us every day. She did what we have all done: she deleted them all.
She shouldn’t have, because they were real.
Woman Thought Overdue Bill Texts Were a Scam—They Weren’t
Ashley had a FasTrak account, California’s electronic tolling system, and her auto-refill had stopped working. With each deleted “scam” text, she was inching herself ever closer to violating actual laws.
It wasn’t until she got a final notice via email, notifying her that her account was deactivated and she was on the verge of being a low-level criminal, that she logged into her account and realized that those texts weren’t scams; they were just indistinguishable from actual scam messages.
The Toll Roads are operated by an agency called The Transportation Corridor Agencies. Speaking with USA Today, a spokesperson for the TCA states that while some users who opt in will receive texts regarding account issues, the majority of text interactions reported to the agency are phishing attempts.
That in itself is a kind of admission that receiving a message from them is a game of Russian roulette; it might be them, but it might also be a scammer. The only way to honestly know is to cut out the middleman. Please don’t respond to the text or open any links within it. If you have a suspicion that it might be real and you’re familiar with the sender, go directly to their actual website and find out for yourself directly from the source.
The post Woman Ignored Scam Texts About Overdue Bills. Turns Out They Were Real. appeared first on VICE.
