The Boston Police Department is warning people about a new scam involving text messages that appear to come from the City of Boston indicating the person receiving the text message has an overdue parking ticket. The text message contains at the top of the message the seal of the City of Boston and reads “This is a notice from City of Boston. Your vehilce has an unpaid parking invoice of $4.35. To avoide a late fee of 35$, please settle your balance promptly. To avoid late fees acess your file by typing the following link in your browser.” The message then provides a link that appears to be legitimate, but is not. If you go to the site provided to pay the ticket you will be prompted to provide your credit card or debit card number which the identity thief will use to charge you much more than $4.35. While this particular text message scam relates to Boston, similar parking ticket text message scams have been reported in other cities as well.
TIPS
As always, you should never make a payment, click on a link or provide personal information in response to a text message regardless of how legitimate it may appear unless you have absolutely confirmed that it is legitimate. In this case there are a number of red flags to indicate that the text message is a scam. The cell phone number used to send the text message has an area code outside of Massachusetts. This is a particularly glaring mistake because it is quite simple for a scammer to “spoof” a phone number to make it appear to come from whatever number the scammer wishes. Also, this particular text message has flawed grammar and described the late fee as 35$ with the dollar sign on the right of the figure which is not done in the United States, but is done in this manner in France and French speaking countries. Finally, parking tickets are never referred to as parking invoices in the United States, but is used in European countries.
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