Do not click links provided in unsolicited messages that claim to be from the postal service or other official sources, per a North Texas postal inspector.
The United States Postal Service has a public service announcement in response to an increasingly common scam this holiday season – it is not going to send you a text message about an unclaimed package.
“When someone receives a text message, saying ‘Hey, the Postal Service is holding a package at your local post office, click on this link,’ number one - don’t click on the link,” said Sean Smith, a postal inspector with USPS here in Dallas-Fort Worth. “The Postal Service does not just randomly, unsolicited, send emails out or send text messages out.”
This kind of scam, sometimes referred to as "smishing," encourages people to click a link where they will then be prompted to enter personal or financial information.
Smishing scams generated an estimated $330 million for the perpetrators within the last year, according to the Federal Trade Commission.
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“If it didn’t work, they wouldn’t be doing it, right?” Smith said. “The individuals behind these smishing attacks know that customers are looking for packages during the holidays, so it sort of goes into one’s curiosity to say, ‘Hey, is this related to the package I ordered?’”
The criminals behind these scams are playing the odds by sending out these mass messages. Approximately 98% of text messages get opened, according to an e-marketing website. The postal service handled around 12 billion packages during last year’s holiday shopping and shipping season, so there are plenty of people who are expecting packages to be delivered.
If you receive a message about a package that you believe to be legitimate, it is still best to contact the shipper or the sender not via any information provided in the message, but instead to contact those sources directly using their corporate website or telephone number, according to the FTC.
