You Are All Familiar With Annoying Spam Text Messages!

We Hate Them Don’t We!

You get messages at all hours, day and night, about insurance, buying used cars, car warranties, and anything else spammers think they can sell you.

Plus countless businesses that you know and do business with now use text messages as a way to keep you informed of your orders and shipping. These have proven very popular but also reduce costs for these businesses, and that helps you save money too.

It is truly annoying and disrupts your life!

Some Are Dangerous!

Except that not all text messages are innocent or just annoying, many are scams. And these scams come in many different forms.

The typical types of Scam Text Messages include:

• Phishing messages asking for your personal information
• Malware lures that want you to click on a link that will infect your device
• Regular monetary scams – from lotto & sweepstakes to vacations to travel, all you have to do is pay a small amount to get the item of value

But now we are seeing an old-school style of scamming return (if it ever went away at all.)

“STOP” SCAMS

Some of these scam texts are what are called “Stop Scams”

Sometimes, when you call or text certain numbers there can secretly be extra charges for that. These days, your phone provider is probably warning you that it might happen but most people do not listen – especially because it never tells you what that additional charge might be.

IT WORKS LIKE THIS:

• You get a text from someone and it usually says it comes from a short number instead of a regular phone number
• The message is offering something that you don’t want or it could be from a company you know
• It says that if you want these texts to stop you should type STOP in a reply message
• If you do that it will charge to your phone bill an extra (unknown) amount – it could be a few dollars or hundreds
• It is that simple

DO THIS INSTEAD

Instead of replying to the message, report them to your carrier. Your photo provider probably offers spam filtering apps. By downloading your carried’s call blocker/filter app you can block them and report them to the phone service provider.