Smishing: SMS Phishing Beware

I don’t remember the day when I saw the news about some people being victimized by a Phishing scam.

I was trying to create a post when I saw it but have forgotten to write about for some reasons.

Actually I had completely forgotten about it until I received a text message this afternoon at about 4PM that said something like, BDO Advisory! Your account is on hold please verify here blah, blah, blah…  and then followed by a link that appears to be for account verification.

The news reported about a guy who lost at least $2000 (100,000Php) in his bank account. Then another victim shared that he too had lost at least $1000 (50,000Php) for the same reason – Online Identity Theft.

There have been reports about this in the past and the victims suffered great loss because their hard earned money just vanished and never seem to retrieve it. They don’t know who stole their money and even if they have reported it to the authorities the police find it hard to track these hackers.

This online identity theft is associated with a Phishing scam.

Before I started writing about this topic I searched read.cash first for similar articles that are already posted. I always do this in every post I make to avoid redundancy and or to be accused of copying someone’s article. So, don’t expect that I will be explaining about the Phishing scam. Just do your own research.

Why do some people tend to lose money through online banking?

Just an FYI, I don’t have money in the bank. I have a bank account but it is only used for withdrawing my payout every cut off.

The reason why some people are being robbed of their money in the bank is because they lack awareness.

What do I mean by this?

A while ago I mentioned a text message that I received this afternoon. Actually this is not the first time that I received such an SMS message telling about something to do with my bank account.

When I learned about the internet back in the 2000 I also learned about hackers. So I am already aware of these online scams because I was once a victim of it although it was not something like Identity theft.

Since then I have ignored those malicious emails and SMS with links to a website that I am receiving.

Below are screenshots of the text messages that I have received. Since this type of Phishing scam attacks cell phone numbers by means of sending SMS messages, it is called SMS phishing or smishing.

As you can see in the screenshot, the attacker was telling me to visit the link provided to verify my BDO account. If you are not aware of this type of scam and have an account with the said bank, you will probably do what the attacker said in the message. Let's say you have at least $1000 dollars in your bank account and want it to be more secure.  Most likely you will lose all of your savings if you do visit and log on the malicious website.

To give you an idea of how the link looked like I have visited it and provided the screenshot here for your awareness.

I visited the website in the SMS sent to me last November 18, 2021. As you can see it will show us here what appears to be the website of the said bank with account login fields. But you will notice that the website is not really the name of the bank.

The screenshot above is the link I visited with the SMS I received earlier today.

As you can see it shows us again the supposed to be the banks webpage. But then again it does not bear the bank's name. Meaning the website is not from the bank. You will also notice that it has the same domain, “.co.za”. I checked google of the said domain and it says the domain is from outside the country . My browser is telling me too that the website is dangerous. It also warned me before I opened the website.

To make it more clearly, the screenshot below will show you the legit website of the said bank.

As you can see, the website bears its brand logo as the icon while the scammer’s website has the name only but not the bank's logo. You will notice too that the legit website doesn’t show the login field right away upon browsing the site. This means that the bank is also protecting each member for a possible identity theft.

I am always receiving similar text messages and I just laughed at them. Another type of scam that I am receiving was a text message from an unknown number saying like they will offer me business and then I will reply to an email address provided. Or something like they have a very urgent matter to discuss and I should reply to the email address given.

I have also tried replying out of my curiosity by using a dummy email account. Then after replying they offered me something that was too good to be true.

So I hope this post has given you an idea or at least to be aware of the bad things happening online or might have happened to any of you. These are from my own experience and observation about the agenda of these online scammers.

If you happen to receive a similar message be it SMS, email or social media please think first before you click a link. You never know what will happen if you click a link even if you did not login to a particular website.

Thanks for reading. Ciao!

 Lead image source credits to Bermix Studio.

Helpful information:

Malware Identity theft

Types of Phishing

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