Security News > 2021 > January > We got used to SMS notifications and phishers are capitalizing on it

A rising onslaught of phishing messages delivered via SMS has been hitting mobile users around the world in the last few months.

The messages take the form of alerts about recipients being eligible to apply for the COVID-19 vaccine, fake notifications about missed deliveries and/or requirements to pay for specific deliveries, messages offering financial help from the government, prizes won.

If you're not 100 percent sure that the SMS is coming from a legitimate, not fraudulent sender, you should do some digging.

If the message purports to be from your bank, go check your account by entering the bank's website address directly into a browser or contact the bank by phone - but don't use any of the links or phone numbers included in the SMS to do it.

The same advice goes for suspicious messages purporting to come from Amazon, PayPal, DHL, a tax authority, a police department or law enforcement agency, a healthcare organization, Apple, Google, a mobile carrier, Facebook, Netflix, and so on: if you have an account with the service, you can access it independently and check if there's really a message for you.

Until telecoms come up with more effective ways to prevent phishing SMS messages from being delivered - and do it consistently by adapting those defenses to stymie new tricks attackers regularly come up with - we have to be careful and not trust implicitly each and every SMS we receive.

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