Paying for a parking spot using an app on your phone has become very popular. Apps such as ParkMobile and PayByPhone are particularly popular in the United States. RingGo is a popular parking app in the UK although it is not available for use in the United States. Recently people in the UK have been receiving text messages from scammer posing as RingGo indicating that a billing review or routine review found a bill for outstanding parking. The text message goes on to direct the targeted scam victim to click on a link that takes them to a phony RingGo website where they are prompted to provide their user name, password and credit card details to pay the phony outstanding parking charge. Of course, anyone doing so will end up providing their credit card information to a scammer.
TIPS
While this scam has not yet been identified in the United States, it is only a matter of time before it turns up with parking apps used in the United States. Fortunately, it is an easy scam to avoid. As I often caution you, whenever you get a phone call, text message you can never be sure who is actually contacting you so you should never click on a link, download an attachment, make a payment or provide sensitive personal information in response to any communication until you have confirmed that it is legitimate. Counterfeit websites, which in the past would often have poor grammar or graphics can now be easily created by even unsophisticated scammers using AI. You just can’t trust any communications. In a situation such as presented by this particular scam, you can merely go to your RingGo app directly and not through a link in a text message or go directly to their website, again not through a link in a text message to determine if you have any outstanding charges.
If you are not a subscriber to Scamicide.com and would like to receive free daily emails with the Scam of the day, all you need to do is to go to the bottom of the initial page of http://www.scamicide.com and type in your email address where it states “Sign up for this blog.”