Smishing: a new way how to steal from you. Here are examples

Smishing: a new way how to steal from you

Whenever you receive an email from a stranger, you’re probably careful (since we all know those people who weren’t and lost a lot of money because of it). But what about the text messages? You should be careful as well. Because smishing (a dangerous SMS spam) is on the rise.

Technology is a good servant, but a bad master. Since the more comfortable lives we live (thanks to modern technologies), the more dangerous it could be. For our money and for our privacy as well.

Nowadays, we all are familiar with the so called “phishing”: a fraud tactics how to convince us to click a dangerous link or give our personal information away. An we all are pretty careful when it comes to trust in what we’ve received via email.

–> Your digital footprint will cost you time (and money, as well)

Unfortunately, when it comes to our SMS inbox, we’re much more trusting.

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In this post, we cover these topics:

• What is smishing?
• How does smishing look like?
• Get protection against smishing

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Smishing, a new way how to scam you

Have you ever received a suspicious email that said “Hi, check this super cool link”? You probably have… and you probably haven’t clicked the link (well played!).

However, when it comes to our mobile phones, we’re less careful. And fraudsters know that.

–> Beware of 'one ring' phone scam. Here's how to protect yourself

So instead of sending more and more dangerous emails, they’re trying to scam us via text messages. And it works. It’s because the cost of texting has decreased while, on the other hand, the number of people who own mobile phones has increased. And when it comes to our cell phones, we are much more trusting than when being online.

The result? The so called smishing (SMS or text message-based phishing) is on the rise. And we’re ot prepared for it

.How does smishing look like? (with examples)

Fraudsters using smishing are trying either to get your personal data (or your company’s data) or trick you to click a malicious link (and download a malware to your phone). Here are two most often scenarios.

Promises, promises, promises

A false alarm

How to protect yourself?

You can’t avoid smishing completely. But you can follow a few rules which help you to stay safe. Here they are:

1. Don’t reply to the text message

Even if the text message says “text ‘stop’ to stop receiving messages,” never reply. Replying may actually result in more messages getting to your phone.

2. Do a web search

If you think something’s not right about incoming SMS, search the number online. (For that case: remember this online database, you’ll find there almost all spam and scam numbers from all over the world.)

3. Don’t click any links in the message

Even though smishing is usually a game of emotional manipulation, don’t let yourself trick into clicking to anything. Because there’s a good chance that if you click on a phishing link, your mobile device will get infected.

4. Get a free SMS and spam blocker

This is the easiest way how to avoid phone and SMS spam. Here's how you do that.