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With the increased use of mobile devices to manage so much of our lives, it’s no surprise scammers have moved to this medium to target your sensitive information. If you have a mobile phone, then you’ve most likely experience smishing. Smishing is a phishing message received via a SMS text message. Just like an email phishing attempt, the scammers are targeting your sensitive information.
Similar to what you might experience in your email, these messages are using emotional triggers to entice you to interact with the links. The themes are typically targeting your personal information such as your username & password, credit card number or national ID.
Below are just a few examples I received over a few months. What was interesting as I monitored these messages was to see a couple of the messages were addressing me as Jesse!
Just as we encourage reporting suspicious email messages to your organization’s security team or the company being spoofed, it’s just as important to report these messages. Below are the steps to report these to your phone provider:
How to report a Smishing txt or SMS?
- Forward suspicious SMS messages to 7726:
- When you receive a spam txt message on your phone, forward that text to the short code 7726 (which spells “SPAM”).
- You’ll then receive an automated message from your wireless carrier asking you then to enter the phone number from which the spam text was sent
How to forward an SMS:
iOS: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208386
Android: https://www.androidauthority.com/how-to-forward-a-text-message-870759/