There’s a Verizon scam that’s fooling many, that we should be aware of, because it’s quite clever and initially fooled me.
I received this text, supposedly from Verizon, saying I had points that were about to expire and I needed to redeem them soon:
I looked at the link and saw Verizon.com, which normally indicated it’s from a Verizon address. (However, look beyond and you may see something strange).
I next signed into my Verzon account directly to see if I had any points, but was unable to find any points program or reference to past programs using their search function. I did recall Verizon had some sort of points program a few years ago, but there was no reference to it.
So I went back to the link and clicked on it, which brought up this window, asking me to enter my phone number to check on my point balance:
I entered my phone number – something they already had in order to send me the text message. (While clicking on an unknown link is always risky, it was a web address, not an unknown file, so I did that with some caution.)
Wow, I have 12,805 points, enough to redeem for a set of Sony headphones. There were more items when I scrolled down, but for fewer points.
I select the EXCHANGE NOW below the item and confirmed it below on the next screen:
So far so good, but here’s when the red flag really went up, asking for a shipping payment and payment information.
There were also other clues along the way that this was a spam. First, it’s unlikely that professional companies send texts with emojis as this did.
If you examine the Verizon link address more closely, you’ll discover it was odd with an appendage including another “.com.”. So, I knew it was not Verizon. It’s also easy to confirm by using ChatGPT.
“is this a verizon address http://verizon.com-ald.com
And the answer was:
No. That is not a legitimate Verizon address.
verizon.com-ald.com is almost certainly a scam or phishing domain.
Here’s how you can tell:
How URLs really work
In a web address, the real domain is the part right before .com, .net, etc.
- Real Verizon site: verizon.com
- This site: com-ald.com
Everything before that (verizon) is just a subdomain, which anyone can create.
👉 Owned by whoever owns com-ald.com, not Verizon
Another way is to just do a search using the title of this post and up comes a long thread on Reddit about how many others encountered a similar message and how some were even fooled. Or examine the country code for the message. In this case it’s from +91, India.
You can never be too careful these day, as the scammers are becoming more clever and creative in enticing us to provide bank and credit card information.
