AUSTIN (KXAN) — As you start to prepare your holiday shopping this year, experts warn you to be wary of scams that will likely increase in the coming weeks.
Cybercriminals are consistently evolving to get people to reveal personal information about themselves. Since text messaging has become one of the most common ways to communicate, scammers have focused their efforts on this mode for phishing attempts.
“Text messaging is just really very lucrative for the scammers,” said George Cray, a Senior Vice President at iconectiv. “Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to tell what is a scam versus what’s legitimate.”
Many companies have started using texting to market products since it is an effective way to reach people. A helpful method to determine whether a text is from a company or a fraud is by the number of digits in the contact.
“Many of the larger brands and retailers really ended up using shortcodes – those five and six-digit numbers,” Cray said.
In order to send messages from one of these shorter numbers, companies must go through a vetting process. If the organization violates the terms, Cray said, it will be forced to surrender the code.
Conversely, it is more difficult to determine if the number is legitimate if it has ten digits, Cray said.
“It’s really the wild west on how [ten-digit numbers] are being used and whether or not you can trust them,” he said.
Generally, scammers will try to…
