Consumer Alert
You might be seeing text messages promising money – maybe the economic impact payments, loans for small businesses, or an offer for money you can get. In fact, I recently saw a WhatsApp text message in Spanish that advertised money for people quarantined at home. If you’ve spotted messages like this, I hope you’ve also deleted them. These text messages going around could lead you to a scam or a hacker, but not to anything helpful.
It’s important to remember that scammers will go to any length to make their message seem real. This particular text had the logo of the Executive Office of the President of the U.S. – a typical scammer tactic to make a message look affiliated with the government. It also had a list of people who could supposedly apply for the government grant – basically anyone – and had misspellings and cut off sentences. Now, not all scammers have bad grammar or spelling – but it’s a good tip-off to a scam when you see them. Also, when it comes to economic impact payments and other pandemic recovery help, the government is not reaching out via text, phone, email, or messages to your social media. If you spot one: pretty likely it’s a scam.
So, if you get text messages claiming to be related to the government’s help for people affected by the Coronavirus:
- Do not click on any links.Clicking could expose you to scams, download malware, or get your phone number added to lists that are then sold to other bad actors.
- Delete those text messages immediately.
- If you have questions about the federal government’s economic impact payment, go to irs.gov/coronavirus.
Report any suspicious text message to the FTC at ftc.gov/complaint. Your report matters. It helps stop scams and alert people about them.
Search Terms
Topics
Scams
12 Comments
It is your choice whether to submit a comment. If you do, you must create a user name, or we will not post your comment. The Federal Trade Commission Act authorizes this information collection for purposes of managing online comments. Comments and user names are part of the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) public records system, and user names also are part of the FTC’s computer user records system. We may routinely use these records as described in the FTC’s Privacy Act system notices. For more information on how the FTC handles information that we collect, please read our privacy policy.
The purpose of this blog and its comments section is to inform readers about Federal Trade Commission activity, and share information to help them avoid, report, and recover from fraud, scams, and bad business practices. Your thoughts, ideas, and concerns are welcome, and we encourage comments. But keep in mind, this is a moderated blog. We review all comments before they are posted, and we won’t post comments that don’t comply with our commenting policy. We expect commenters to treat each other and the blog writers with respect.
We don't edit comments to remove objectionable content, so please ensure that your comment contains none of the above. The comments posted on this blog become part of the public domain. To protect your privacy and the privacy of other people, please do not include personal information. Opinions in comments that appear in this blog belong to the individuals who expressed them. They do not belong to or represent views of the Federal Trade Commission.
In reply to What do u do if u click on by tnelson