Thousands of Hoosiers are receiving a sternly worded text warning— supposedly sent by a court— that they must immediately pay fines for toll road violations or appear for a hearing.
The text looks authentic.
It features official-sounding language and an image of Indiana’s state seal.
By scanning a convenient bar code, the texts explain, recipients of the message can quickly and easily “pay their fine” and remedy their predicament— avoiding the need to go to court.
The problem is that the texts come from impostors perpetrating a phishing scam.
Phishing is a type of cyberattack where scammers impersonate legitimate organizations to trick victims into clicking malicious links, opening infected attachments, providing credentials or outright making financial payments.
Don’t fall for these schemes. Ignore these texts. Just delete them, advise state officials
Traditionally, Hoosiers have been well-advised to look for telltale signs of scams, such as:
•Urgent or threatening language.
•Website and email addresses that do not match the official domain of the supposed sender— although scammers DO often use names changed only slightly from the real ones.
•Unusual requests for sensitive personal information, such as passwords, Social Security numbers, or bank details, which legitimate organizations do not ask for via text.
•Generic greetings and poor grammar.
•Inaccurate or sloppy renderings of such features as the state seal.
While such factors can still be giveaways, the cybercriminals behind these bogus alerts continue becoming more sophisticated in their presentation and tactics — making it more difficult to tell what’s legitimate and what’s not.
The best advice is to avoid doing any business via text unless you know the sender. Whereas scammers used to operate primarily by crudely mass-blasting their messages, nowadays their methods are data-driven and highly localized.
Modern fraudsters are now served by a growing cottage industry of third-party accomplices operating worldwide that provide specialized products and services— from startup software to dedicated tech support.
A Chinese-language service openly sells “U.S. traffic fine data,” enabling fraudsters to target victims with recent violations— thereby reaching individuals all the more likely to believe the ruse that they are on the hook for unpaid fines related to their recent infractions, state officials say.
Government agencies in the United States have no way currently to stop the scammers before they strike, but leaders worldwide are collaborating to develop better means to keep up with the perpetrators’ technologies and attack cybercrime on a global scale.