Scams Abound

By BD Bondy

There are so many scams involving texts and emails. Between Carol and I, we get something every day. I get more texts from mysterious people asking how I’m doing, or wanting to get together as it’s been a long time. I have no idea what that’s about, I just delete them and select report as junk.

Lately, Carol and I have been getting texts saying it’s the final notice to pay my E-ZPASS Toll. E-ZPass is actually a legitimate Toll business, and we do use it, however, since our tolls are paid, and since we haven’t accrued any recently, these are clearly scams. One of the most obvious things about the text was that it didn’t list the state it was from.

There are 17 E-ZPass states, all of them in the eastern half of the US. Don’t click on the link in the text. Delete it and report it as junk, but otherwise, it’s a scam. I got 3 of them last week and every one of them said it was my final warning. The intent is to make you react without thinking about the legitimacy of the message.

Pop-up messages are the same. They are frequently dire, possibly noisy, and alarmist. Those are clues that it is a phishing scam of some sort. A neighbor recently had an email which was asking for money via bitcoin, and said his browsing history was tracked, his camera was accessed, and his porn watching habits were monitored.

That was a scam with a twist. The email did contain a password they used. The thing is, there are over a billion stolen passwords on the black market sold in the dark web. Google tells me that I have compromised passwords, as does my iPhone. Unfortunately, that’s the nature of our world, and it’s not getting better.

I’ve changed my passwords for anything where I use a credit card. So far, none of those have shown up compromised. There is reason to be watchful, and maybe even nervous, but don’t panic. The vast majority of these messages are phishing and the best thing you can do is to delete them.

Read about the E-ZPass scam HERE. https://www.news9.com/story/67e18c53d6bda7547c492e22/ezpass-scam-how-to-protect-yourself-from-smishing-and-other-types-of-fraud