TEXT scams are growing increasingly common and sometimes cybercriminals return to old tricks to catch you out.
One text message scam that is raising its ugly head again is the ‘fake millionaire’ message, which is too good to be true.
A recent iteration of this scam can be seen above.
The message comes from a suspicious and ambiguous email address and that should be the receiver’s first red flag.
The contents of the message are also alarming.
It’s not addressed to anyone specifically and has clearly been sent to a number of people.
The message includes the usual trick of someone pretending to have won a lot of money.
In this case, it’s £155million ($128million).
The person claims to be from a family in Ireland who has won the Euromillions.
They say they are texting strangers to share their wealth because they believe winning the jackpot “was a gift from god”.
The scammer then asked you to email your name, address, country, age, gender, marital status, occupation, and phone number.
They tell you to send all that information to a completely different email address from the one linked to the message.
This is another huge red flag.
A stranger does not need all that personal information about you.
Giving away information like that can risk your personal data being stolen and scams like this can even see you lose money through fraud.
Scammers sometimes ask for basic information first before…
