Cybercriminals send deceptive texts, oftentimes impersonating legitimate organizations, with the hopes of tricking people into giving out sensitive, personal information.
This form of a scam is typically referred to as "smishing," short for SMS phishing.
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WATCH HERENBC CT Responds heard from dozens of viewers who received a scam message Tuesday claiming that the recipient of the text owed money to the Connecticut Department of Motor Vehicles.
How do scammers send these texts to so many people?
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SIGN UP Independent tech journalist Lon Seidman says it’s hard to say exactly what they’re doing, but he says typically criminals create an account on a text message server that can efficiently send out a batch of dozens, or even millions, of texts.
He says they use fake information to create the account, so that investigators can't trace back to them.
But how do they get our phone numbers?
NBC CT Responds
“Phone numbers are very predictable, right? So we know what our area code is in Connecticut. We have a couple of them now. And everyone’s number has three digits and the four that follow, so you could probably create a script that would just text everybody and get out those numbers that quickly,” said Seidman.
In some cases, Seidman says the scammer may use the internet to scrape phone numbers to target certain people.
Whatever the methodology, don’t fall for their trap.
Rule of thumb: don’t click on suspicious text message links.
