this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2024
226 points (88.7% liked)

Ask Lemmy

27240 readers
1990 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions


Rules: (interactive)


1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them


2) All posts must end with a '?'This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?


3) No spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.


4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected]. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].


5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.


6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected] or [email protected]


Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija


Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Url looks suss. Seems kinda sophisticated for the usual ups fishing scam. Here's the text message I got leading here.

"Wishing you a bright and sunny day!" Lol, I almost want to help this guy by explaining that UPS and American companies in general have disdain for their customers and would never wish them to have anything that would not benefit the company.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 89 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

Very well known scam. Some details that give it away:

(1) They used a url shortener that doesn't let you see the actual domain. (bit.ly)

(2) Website domain is not legitimate.

USPS's website is usps.com. If the URL doesn't end in usps.com (meaning usps.fakewebsite.com is still fake) then it's not legitimate.

(3) Tone: The USPS doesn't text you like you're their friend.

(4) The number they're texting you from is not an SMS short code number (usually 5 digits). Instead you're getting a text from a 10 digit number with an area code, which means it's a person/individual rather than an application or service.

source: used to work as cyber sec analyst

[–] [email protected] 31 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (3 children)

(5) grammatical error(s): "We will ship again in" instead of "we will ship again on"

Edit: more subtle errors and phrasing that feels like it was written by a non-native English speaker.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 weeks ago

(6) USPS tracking numbers are like 65 digits long, because they expect to track every hydrogen atom in the known universe individually.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Yeah the first bullet copy with the comma and wrong preposition is clearly unprofessional. These scams always use poor contrasting red warning text as well.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I heard a theory that they put mistakes in intentionally to filter for dumb people.

Doubt that's true, but it's a funny idea.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

It's absolutely true, they want to make sure the victim won't realize it's a scam partway through and bail.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

If it takes a couple hours to extract money from somebody they don’t want to waste an hour on someone they can’t close.

Scams are still businesses that care about efficiency.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

You're absolutely right, of couse, but keep in mind that communications is still mostly done by people and people are generally fucking stupid.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 weeks ago

I'll add how is it that they could not know the address of the recipient, yet would know their phone number?

Either the recipient is totally unknown or they know the address. The last thing they would know about a recipient is the phone number.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

That's interesting I didn't think about that fourth point, but whenever I get a verification SMS it does always come from a 5 digit number.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago

That one is not hard evidence though, for example delivery drivers from FedEx in my area send text messages from their actual phones announcing an upcoming delivery.

The messages are still standardized, so I'm assuming they are company phones and send pre-programmed messages from templates, but if I call that number, I'll actually speak to the person handling my delivery.