The State of California’s Franchise Tax Board (FTB) has warned of an ongoing SMS phishing (smishing) marketing campaign concentrating on residents, Malwarebytes reviews.
The FTB said, “These textual content messages comprise a hyperlink to a fraudulent model of sure FTB net pages, that are designed to steal private and banking info. The rip-off goals to trick taxpayers into offering private particulars and bank card info.”
The textual content messages purport to come back from California’s tax board, informing recipients that they should present their cost info to say their tax refund. The messages set a brief deadline to say the refund so as to compel customers to behave shortly.
Malwarebytes outlines the next purple flags to assist customers acknowledge these scams:
- “Suspicious domains: Official tax authorities solely use domains ending in ‘.gov.’ Any hyperlink resulting in ‘ftb.ca-nt.cc’ or different odd-looking domains is a significant purple flag.
- “Pressing or threatening language: Scammers usually attempt to rush recipients with claims like “everlasting forfeiture of your refund” and tight deadlines.
- “Requests for delicate private or monetary info: Reliable companies by no means ask for checking account data or different personal particulars through textual content message.
- “Promised immediate rewards: Messages providing rapid deposits shouldn’t be trusted.
- “Odd directions for opening hyperlinks: Be careful for steps like ‘reply with ‘Y’, then shut and reopen the message’ or pasting the hyperlink into Safari. It is a rip-off tactic to bypass safety features.
- “International cellphone numbers: US federal and state companies solely use official numbers, not international codes. A sender like +63 (Philippines) pretending to be a US state company is a certain giveaway of fraud.”
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Malwarebytes has the story.
