ON YOUR SIDE: Bombarded by scammy robo-texts? You're not alone. onyourside alabamanewsnetwork
Fraudulent text messages are soaring, deluging Americans with scams ranging from false claims that a person's bank account has been frozen to online orders not being delivered, a consumer advocacy group has found.
"Especially the scam robocalls, the ones that are most dangerous, have dropped about in half from a year ago. That's definitely good news," said Teresa Murray, consumer watchdog at PIRG."There are some things that are finally being done in Washington to try to dig deeper and go after the bad guys."According to PIRG, several factors are responsible for the drop in robocalls.
Instead of seeking to bait recipients by telling them that they had won a prize, once a common scam, many robo-texts now use language similar to actual bank or retailer notifications. Scammers often create dedicated landing pages that resemble bank websites, while texts may appear to come from a local phone number, the group found, citing several examples purporting to be from Citibank.