The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has issued a stark warning to Americans this month, urging them to avoid falling victim to deceptive text messages that falsely claim to collect road tolls. They have received over 2,000 incidents reported, where scammers, impersonating state road toll authorities, are attempting to extract sensitive financial information from unsuspecting phone users. These insidious messages are part of a widespread ‘smishing’ campaign, an SMS-based phishing attack designed to dupe individuals into handing over credit or debit card details or revealing bank account information.
This fraudulent scheme employs an almost uniform message across various states, misleadingly asserting that the recipient owes unpaid road toll fees. The deception includes threats of penalties such as fines or the suspension of driving privileges to pressure compliance. With this growing issue, the FBI advises recipients of such fraudulent texts to immediately submit a report through their Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) at their website and promptly delete the dubious messages from their devices.
Recent analysis by cybersecurity expert Palo Alto Networks has uncovered that over 10,000 domains have been set up by a threat actor for these scams. These fraudulent attempts are not only mimicking toll services but also package delivery services across at least 10 states in the United States and even extending into the Canadian province of Ontario.
Although Apple has implemented a security measure that disables links within messages sent from unknown contacts on iPhones, the cunning scam attempts to circumvent this by encouraging recipients to respond with a simple “Y,” which then reactivates the communication thread. The public is urged to remain vigilant against these persistent scams and to safeguard their personal and financial information from being exploited by such deceitful attempts.
