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Last updated on July 5th, 2024 at 12:57 pm
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As we all know there are new scams appearing daily. Well, today isn’t any different. My dad had a spam text this morning. I also did some digging but we’ll get to that in a bit.
It seems this text message is regarding Netflix. I’m not s Netflix user and I’ve never had an account so I don’t have to worry about this but I thought it was still worth sharing.
Text scams in general
Text scams, in general, are on the rise. They are also something people might not think twice about. if your someone who has text alerts set for various services you may think it’s a bill alert or something like that.
Like email scams, text scams can be sent from various parts of the world. Some are sent from phone numbers or can be sent via an email address. When they are sent from phone numbers some may be spoofed or they may be autogenerated numbers.
If you’d like to learn more you can visit this Federal Trade Commission (FTC) link.
Text Scams target popular services
Text scams may use commonly used services, for instance, the text my dad had today was for Netflix. We’ve never used the service but it is popular. They may also try to impersonate a service as well such as FedEx, UPS, USPS or other companies.
The text my dad was sent
So my dad was sent this text this morning. it was sent from an email address.
The company is named Wazobia properties (I’ll get into this soon). The text was sent from their email address it seems.
the text itself
So the text was simple it stated the following:
we could disable your Netflix today due to not paying. trynetflixustream–ipjbetiqwf.melissadexguzman.ca
The latter part of the message was a text link. From what I could tell it was Canadian since it had the dot ca at the end. It also seemed like a referral link to someone’s account possibly. I didn’t click on it.
I did try to look it up online but nothing came up that was promising.
I did some digging
As I did some digging I searched for the property company. They are real. It seems Wazobia properties are based in Nigeria. I found they had a Facebook page and even viewed their website. Its a basic property or real estate company nothing special really. But as we know there are many scams to originate in Nigeria.
Let us not forget the Nigerian prince email or the lottery scams.
You can read this article from the Better Business Bureau or the FTC to learn more about the scams listed above.
Use common sense
If you use Netflix or another service mentioned in the text message contact the company directly. Don’t click on any links in the message. Like with email links you never know where you will end up or what may be added to your phone.
Another thing you shouldn’t do is text back or test the word STOP.
Some service providers offer ways to block spam texts you can also report them to your service provider as well. That you’ll have to look into since every cell provider may be different when it comes to this issue.
Another thing you can do is just delete the text.
I hope this post was helpful.
