Jim Rossman: Scammers never stop scamming

I received an email this week from Cricket Wireless.

It read:

“Valued customer,

An identity verification is pending on your Cricket Wireless profile. Due to this error, we have limited access to our services until this is done.

To remove the limitation, please get verified by GOING HERE (it was a link).

Greetings,

Cricket Wireless LLC”

The email contained the Cricket Wireless logo and even a “click to unsubscribe” link. It seemed legit enough, but it was wrong.

The link led to a page that looked like a Cricket support page, and there were blank spaces for me to enter my login information and even the account PIN.

How did I know it was a scam?

I have been a customer of Cricket Wireless in the past, but I am not a current customer and the email they used is the one I set up to interact with readers of this column. This is not an email account that was active when I was a Cricket customer many years ago.

What if I was a current Cricket Wireless customer? How would I know it was a scam?

You should treat every incoming email as if it were a scam, especially if it asks you to verify personal or login information.

If I were a current Cricket Wireless customer, I would go to the Cricket Wireless app or my favorite for Cricket Wireless and try to connect.

I would also pay attention to the email address they send the scam message to. If they sent the scam message to my main Gmail account, which I used when I had the Cricket service, I would probably change my password just in case.

The world is unfortunately still full of scammers. The “click here” link in the scam message I received was disabled after a day or two. That’s what scammers do: They create a fake web page to collect login information from unsuspecting customers, then delete it and disappear a day or two later.

Likewise, you should be wary of any email informing you of a successful order for Norton or McAfee antivirus or any other service that you did not order. These emails conveniently give you a phone number to call to cancel the order, which sounds like what you should do to avoid being charged.

You can always check your bank or credit card accounts to see if there are actually any pending charges for such services, but chances are they just want to call you and try to get you to verify your account information. credit card or bank account so they can “recredit your account”.

Don’t fall into the trap.

Jim Rossman is a technology columnist for Tribune News Service. It can be attached to [email protected].