On Friday, the FBI issued a public service announcement about the recent wave of fraudulent attempts to obtain money and personal information from electronic toll collection service customers. The bureau said its Internet Crime Complaint Center has received over 2,000 reports since early March about “smishing” texts sent by actors purporting to represent toll agencies. The complaint information suggests the scam “may be moving from state-to-state.” The FBI adds, “The ‘outstanding toll amount’ [requested in each fraudulent text] is similar among the complaints,” although “the link provided within the text is created to impersonate the state’s toll service name, and phone numbers appear to change between states.”
A Forbes.com article following up on the FBI announcement looks at the reasons behind the global upsurge in text-based scams that cause $300 million in annual losses in the US alone.