Scam alert: Smishing

Tweet
–
A
A
A
+

<!–

–>

Anyone who has ever gotten a phone call in the middle of the night can understand Ed Midgett Jr.’s concern when his phone went off at 2:38 a.m.

It couldn’t be good news, right?

It wasn’t. It was a scam.

It was a text message urging Midgett to claim his $1,000 Wal-Mart gift card.

The text message was a “smishing” scam. It’s a term for a relatively new scam, but one similar to a fraud you be familiar with called “phishing.”

Phishing is when crooks and identity thieves send you an email that looks as if it is coming from your bank, credit union, credit card company or some other legitimate business. It tricks unsuspecting email users into hitting the reply button and then answering questions that reveal passwords, bank account information or even their Social Security numbers.

Smishing does the same thing, but with a cellphone. The name comes from combining the name of the technology used for text messaging – SMS, or Short Message Service – with the word phishing.

Wal-Mart – to its chagrin, I’m sure – is a frequent target of this type of scam. In fact, last September I wrote about the exact same type of hoax, except that it came via email as a phishing scam – involving Wal-Mart.

So here I was again, six months later, calling Wal-Mart to ask about the company name being used as a front for a criminal enterprise.

It turns out that this past Friday, Wal-Mart issued a fraud alert about this particular smishing hoax, saying there had been a recent increase in reports of this scam.

Ashley Hardie, a spokeswoman for Wal-Mart, said her company does have a gift card giveaway; you enter into it by completing the company’s online survey and you need a Wal-Mart receipt transaction number to do it.

Hardie said the company encourages people to report phishing and smishing scams to the Federal Trade Commission (ftc.gov) and to Wal-Mart by sending a message with as much information you can garner about the scam to abuse@walmart.com.

If you do complete the Wal-Mart online survey, Hardie said, the company would never ask for financial information such as credit card or bank account numbers. Customers who fill out the survey are entered into a drawing and could receive a $1,000 gift card. But, Hardie said, Wal-Mart notifies the winner by certified mail – not by sending a text message in the middle of the night.