That’s not a marketing message gone awry, it’s a scam.
Yeah that looks like a mass text sent out by scammers to tens of thousands of phone numbers hoping some of them have Capital One cards and will click the link and provide authentication information before realizing they’ve been scammed. I see lots of texts and emails like this with links that appear legit on first glance but don’t hold up if you look harder.
I think my favorite one was micorsoft . com because that’s the typo I most commonly make when typing Microsoft too quickly.
Full confirm, I got the same one.
That type of scam nearly got me once. I had just ordered my new desktop PC, and then two days after it shipped, I got a text from “FedEx” saying that my package was being held up somewhere, and I needed to click this link to solve the problem.
While I was kind of freaking out, trying to figure out if this text was a scam or if it was real, the actual FedEx showed up at my door with my new PC.
So yeah, if they send off a hundred thousand texts or emails at once, odds are pretty good they will hit paydirt quite a few times.
The easiest way is to go to your desktop/laptop, launch a browser, and go to FedEx or bank and login. If you don’t have a FedEx account, set one up. Do it for UPS, too. It will let you know if there are any inbound packages for you.
But never communicate with the company in question based on a text. Always do it through a secure means. Either go to a branch, or launch their dedicated app, or log in on their web site. They will have secure messaging through there.
Good idea. I am set up that way at USPS, but it never occurred to me at those other ones as I rarely get stuff shipped through them anymore. Lately everything’s been coming through USPS, at least for the final leg. Of course, the one time FedEx actually delivers it, that’s when I get the text!
Clearly your phone was spying on you!
I nearly got nabbed by that one too, but I don’t think it was random – I absolutely had a large package I was expecting within a day or two. I suspect that FedEx’s relatively open API might allow scammers to get names, phone numbers, or addresses associated with deliveries.
I think I actually described my experience with this scam upthread somewhere. To be perfectly honest, they DID get me – I followed the link and entered a CC number to put down a $4.25 “holding fee” on the package. It was only on the follow-up screen where they got greedy and asked me for my SSN that I realized it was a scam. I was able to freeze/replace my card before they were able to exploit it so no harm done, but it was embarrassing.
I got one the other day from “Amazon Customer Service” telling me my Prime needed to be renewed.
The sending email was obviously wrong, and when I went to Amazon and double checked, my Prime didn’t lapse until November…
That’s just the predictive algorithm being predictive!
The same algorithm that keeps trying sell me a vacuum cleaner right after I bought one?¹ That algorithm would’ve been offering some kind of deal for signing up for Prime.
¹ Maybe it thinks I’m a collector? Is there Rule 34 equivalent “if it exists, someone collects it”?
Everybody knows algorithms cannot exist in a vacuum.
Oooooh that is bad. I salute you!
I received an SMS message today:
I am Alice from Tik Tok. Your resume is very suitable for us, with a relaxed working environment. Please contact me for more job details: w a . m e / 4 4 7 3 8 3 0 7 1 4 5 9
I’m dying to click this and see what happens, but it’s probably not a good idea. This is a WhatsApp domain and I guess the goal is to get my phone number, but they already had it and sent the SMS. Perhaps they want to verify it?
Ugh. WhatsApp. What a pile of shit, every time I travel to Central America or the Caribbean I have to install it to do anything, and immediately a flood of new spam calls and texts flow in.
Absolutely DON’T do that and delete it instead. You already KNOW it’s a scam.
They want to move you to a more private/secure platform where it’s harder to detect or report them, so they can then run their grift with fewer interruptions/obstacles.
Our teenager nearly got bitten by a Discord scam. They claimed to be from Discord, said the account had been falsely flagged for bad content, and then wanted the password changed. The flag only went up (and the kid got me involved) when Discord asked for $500 to finish the job.