By Mylee Dubin
As much as we’re warned about not falling from internet scams, sometimes we just forget to heed those warnings. Often, we hear about people in their “golden years” falling for the scams. But recently, I heard about someone quite a bit younger experiencing a disastrous but nonetheless interesting misfortune. I had to investigate further.
When I asked if she wanted to remain anonymous, laidback senior (not senior citizen) Celia Morton replied that she “didn’t care.” As I asked her about what had happened, she kept laughing and calling the situation “stupid.”
If you’ve ever been sent a fake text message from “UPS,” Celia can relate. Unaware of the possible scam behind the link, she innocently wanted to make sure her package was arriving.
According to Celia, the text told her something along the lines of “We lost your package.” To make things worse, Celia got this text on Christmas morning, which was, of course, alarming to Celia because who wants to hear that one of their packages got lost on Christmas?
In a hurry to fix the problem, Celia didn’t hesitate to follow the text’s directions. “I typed in my credit card, and it didn’t work,” she recalled, “so then I typed in my mom’s, and hers also didn’t work. And then I typed in my dad’s, too.” This proved to be a mistake as all three of those credit cards were, in turn, hacked.
Celia said she didn’t get a lot of those messages, so who can really blame her if she didn’t know?
By now, UPS is well aware of these fraudulent texts, and they even have a separate page on their website to warn their users of the scams. UPS first tells its customers to slow down. “Scammers rely on urgency to create panic,” the site says. “Be cautious of anything that implies you must act immediately. Take the time to review the message, then review it again.”
Their second piece of advice is to not click the link (check it first!) “Legitimate UPS links will start with “https://www.ups.com”, “https://billing.ups.com”, “https://go.ups.com” or “http:/links4.upsemail.com.” If you receive a suspicious UPS text, now you know what to look for to confirm its legitimacy.
Additionally, a legitimate UPS text will come from 94601, 69877, 48515, 52892, and calls would come from 1-833-242-1931. Their list of legitimate emails include accountconfirm@ups.com, mcinfo@ups.com, pkginfo@ups.com, customer-notifications@ups.com, auto-notify@ups.com, emailinfo@ups.com, invoice-notification@ups.com, donotreply@ups.com, ups@emails.ups.com, ups@upsemail.com UPSAdministrationSupport@ups.com, or no.reply@upsbilling.ups.com.
They also tell you to check the details, like spelling and grammar errors. After you have determined your text message is a scam, UPS urges you to “report, block, and delete it” because, “If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.”
Fortunately, Celia’s story has a happy ending. They were able to resolve the situation by simply calling and canceling the credit cards, and that was the only thing in jeopardy.
If this were me, I would be in hot water with my parents. Celia said her parents were pretty angry and said, “‘You’re an idiot.’” Celia laughed it off.
Unfortunately, justice was not served. Celia reported there was no way for the authorities to find the criminals that took their information, so be aware, and don’t answer your suspicious UPS texts, even on Christmas!
Celia’s advice to anyone else who receives these scam texts is to “delete them” because “that’s what my parents said.”
