Url looks suss. Seems kinda sophisticated for the usual ups fishing scam. Here’s the text message I got leading here.
“Wishing you a bright and sunny day!” Lol, I almost want to help this guy by explaining that UPS and American companies in general have disdain for their customers and would never wish them to have anything that would not benefit the company.
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- 3rd party URL shortener, immediate red flag
- Non-USPS.com domain once you tapped it (which you shouldn’t have)
- National service sending from a South Carolina area code instead of a short code or a toll free number
- Does USPS even have your phone number tied to your delivery address?
That also doesn’t look anything like a USPS tracking number (which, if this were real, you’d probably already have). Pro-tip: USPS has “informed delivery” where they’ll send you an email every day with scans of your mail and any packages on their way to you. Which would give you another way to know that this isn’t real.
You clicked a random link from an sms message?
That’s a bold move, Cotton.
PSA you can check a bitly link without clicking it by using their link checker: https://support.bitly.com/hc/en-us/p/link-checker
TIL, ty
This is 10000% a scam. That’s not the USPS url scheme. Plus, as a government entity, they’ll start correspondence through certified mail. Another question you could ask yourself is “Did I order any packages lately?” IF not, then more proof it’s a scam.
I get emails from usps all the time, they have a service to alert you of mail and packages arriving. Though, they dont SMS, and wouldnt be using a bit.ly url.
Very well known scam. Some details that give it away:
(1) They used a url shortener that doesn’t let you see the actual domain. (bit.ly)
(2) Website domain is not legitimate.
USPS’s website is usps.com. If the URL doesn’t end in usps.com (meaning usps.fakewebsite.com is still fake) then it’s not legitimate.
(3) Tone: The USPS doesn’t text you like you’re their friend.
(4) The number they’re texting you from is not an SMS short code number (usually 5 digits). Instead you’re getting a text from a 10 digit number with an area code, which means it’s a person/individual rather than an application or service.
source: used to work as cyber sec analyst
(5) grammatical error(s): “We will ship again in” instead of “we will ship again on”
Edit: more subtle errors and phrasing that feels like it was written by a non-native English speaker.
(6) USPS tracking numbers are like 65 digits long, because they expect to track every hydrogen atom in the known universe individually.
Yeah the first bullet copy with the comma and wrong preposition is clearly unprofessional. These scams always use poor contrasting red warning text as well.
I heard a theory that they put mistakes in intentionally to filter for dumb people.
Doubt that’s true, but it’s a funny idea.
It’s absolutely true, they want to make sure the victim won’t realize it’s a scam partway through and bail.
Why would they care though?
If it takes a couple hours to extract money from somebody they don’t want to waste an hour on someone they can’t close.
Scams are still businesses that care about efficiency.
I’ll add how is it that they could not know the address of the recipient, yet would know their phone number?
Either the recipient is totally unknown or they know the address. The last thing they would know about a recipient is the phone number.
Yes, and usps is never going to text you. Be careful about what links you click. This link could have passed through tracking and flagged your number as someone who clicks their links. At the very least they know it’s an active phone number, and at worst they start targeting you more frequently (or sell a list to other people to target you).
This is why you shouldn’t ever respond, click on, interact with, or even read scam messages. Same goes for emails btw. Disable auto-loading images in emails since that is another way they can track active emails.
But, good job second guessing the message and asking about it. I mean it. Some scams rely on you not talking to anyone so it is good to ask others if you’re unsure/uncomfortable. This is especially true if someone tries to tell you not to talk to anyone else since that is a common practice scammers use as well and should be an instant red flag
usps is never going to text you.
USPS will text you, but only for packages you explicitly request SMS tracking messages for, those texts will never contain a link to a website, and they will always come from a 6-digit short code, not a full phone number
100% yeah. The browser URL doesn’t have ups in it.
Ups is not usps
100% scam
Yes, I get them constantly.
Scam. Suspicious URL, slightly off grammer. Classic phishing.
Contact seller if unsure.
How could you not? Do you buy things so often that that happens a lot? Ignoring the grammatical error of in instead of on, are you actually expecting a package with that numberwhich is not a typical USPS tracking number
Even if this is true - which it isn’t - it’s much better to let packages be sent back to the sender than to take responsibility upon yourself.
How could you read that text and then click on link?
- You expecting a package? If no - scam. If yes proceed to 2.
- Check the tracking code on the carriers site or on a multi track site and see what the status says.
Ive had packages come to the building and the postal worker not knowing which box to put it in so it went back to the post office and the tracking indicating unsuccessful delivery due to unknown address (or something similar). In these cases, call or visit the post office doing the delivery or the company. The tracking number will be the key piece of information you can tie to a partial address. In smaller communities, this wont even happen as just placing a name on a package can get a successful delivery since the postal worker knows everyone in the community.
your first clue was the link in the text - no shipper is going to miss having its branding in the url. the second was that the url it redirects to its obviously random bs and if you do a whois you see its def not owned by usps.
got a few of these phishing attempts myself over thanksgiving. holiday gift shopping season has begun, the scammers want to catch the less savy among us.
