Scam of the Day
Scam of the day – March 22, 2026 – Why iPhone Theft Is Exploding: The $30 Billion Black Market Threat and How to Protect Yourself
Theft of iPhones is a major problem. The black market for sale of stolen phones is valued at $30 billion dollars a year and iPhones are particularly targeted because of their high resale value which is as much as 60% of its retail value. If not properly protected, a stolen phone can provide information that can lead to identity theft including accessing your bank accounts. 40% of victims of iPhone theft end up becoming victims of identity theft.
TIPS
So what should you do to protect yourself?
You should consider using Apple’s Device Protection which will protect the security of your phone when it is away from home or work. To turn on Stolen Device Protection, you must use two-factor authentication for your Apple Account and set up or enable the following on your iPhone: a device passcode; Face ID or Touch ID; and Significant Locations* (Location Services). This will protect you even if the thief knows your passcode.
Use a strong passcode. Avoid simple passcodes like “1234” or “abcd”. Consider using Face ID or Touch ID for added security.
Turn off Wallet Access when locked. This will prevent a thief from being able to access to payment cards, concert tickets or sport event tickets stored in your Apple Wallet. To do this go to Settings > Face ID & Passcode, toggle off “Wallet” under “Allow Access When Locked”.
Finally, and of great importance, don’t store unencrypted passwords on your phone and turn off autologin/autofill by going to Settings s > Passwords > Autofill Passwords, toggle off the autofill option.
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stolen iPhones, iPhone theft prevention, iPhone security tips, Apple Stolen Device Protection, Apple Wallet security, mobile phone black market, how to protect your iPhone from theft
Scam of the day – March 21, 2026 – Nationwide Fake Traffic Violation Scam: How Imposter Scammers Use Phony Notices to Steal Your Money
Imposter scams have long been among the most lucrative for scammers. While there are many variations of this scam, the most common variations have involved scammers contacting their victims posing as a popular company with which we all do business or a government agency. The scammer then, under a wide variety of pretenses, demands an immediate payment by cryptocurrencies, gift cards, credit card or wired funds. Being asked to pay by gift cards or cryptocurrencies is a definite indication that the call is a scam since no company or government agency requests or accepts payments by gift cards or cryptocurrencies.
Reproduced below is a phony traffic violation notice being sent by emails and text messages that attempts to lure the targeted victim into making a payment to avoid severe penalties. The format of the notice appears legitimate and the exact same format is also being used in Georgia, Minnesota, Michigan, New Jersey and New Hampshire with just minor adaptations for local statute references and court addresses. Of course, anyone scanning the QR code will be prompted to make a payment for the phony violation. Unfortunately, it is very simple for even a technologically unsophisticated criminal to create legitimate appearing notices.
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As I have often reminded you, whenever you are contacted by phone call, email or a text message you can never be sure who is actually contacting you. B.S. Be skeptical. Even if your phone indicates that the text message is coming from the local court, it is a simple matter for a scammer to manipulate your Caller ID to make the message appear legitimate and hide the true source of the text message.
Never click on a link, download an attachment, scan a QR code, provide personal information or make a payment in response to an email, text message or phone call unless you have absolutely confirmed that the communication is legitimate. A quick call to the actual court using a number you can get online rather than a phone number contained in the notice will confirm that the notice you received is bogus.
In regard to this particular scam, it is interesting to note that the lazy scammers use the same name for the clerk of court and judge in the form. It should also be noted that no court will send you a notice with a QR code to use to make a payment.
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Scam of the day – March 20, 2026 – Scammers Sending Out Phony Data Breach Notices
Data breaches have become an unfortunate fact of life for us all. In 2025 there were 12,195 confirmed data breaches that put millions of us in danger of identity theft. Taking advantage of public awareness of data breaches and the dangers they pose, scammers are sending out emails and text messages posing as companies with which we do business containing phony notices of data breaches with links or QR codes that take you to sites where you are prompted to provide personal information that would lead to your becoming a victim of identity theft.
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Trust me, you can’t trust anyone. Whenever you get such a data breach notice, you can’t be sure if it is legitimate or not and the emails, text messages and websites constructed by the scammers using AI can be very convincing. Therefore, if you get such a notice and want to follow up on it, go directly on your own to the website of the company that appears to be involved where you can find accurate information about any actual data breaches and your options.
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Scam of the day – March 19, 2026 – Police Issue Warning About Fraud Recovery Scams
Recently the Maui Police Department issued a warning about a scam that I have been warning you about for years. It involves scammers targeting people who have already been the victim of scams posing as either investigators, government agencies or law firms telling the scam victims that they can can recover the funds lost in the original scam. They demand an upfront fee and then disappear. Scammers often keep detailed records of their victims and sell these lists, often referred to as “sucker lists” to other scammers on the Dark Web, that part of the Internet where scammers sell their goods and services. Scammers also get the names of scam victims through monitoring consumer complaint websites or social media. Some of these recovery scammers use AI to create believable websites or call centers.
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Legitimate recovery entities such as the FBI or law firms do not charge upfront fees for investigating crimes or for efforts to return funds to people who have been scammed. and they never guarantee asset recovery. Governmental agencies do not charge any fees for asset recovery.
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Scam of the day – March 18, 2026 – USPS Change‑of‑Address Scams: How Criminals Redirect Your Mail and Steal Your Identity
In the Scam of the day for March 7, 2023 I warned about the danger of identity theft that occurs when criminals steal your mail from your mailbox. Among the dangers of mail theft are criminals gathering personal information contained in your mail to set up accounts in your name or getting your credit card bill and using the information in your bill to access your credit card. However, sometimes criminals don’t even have to steal your mail, they can get the United States Postal Service (USPS) to deliver your mail directly to the criminal by submitting a change of address form with the post office on your behalf either in person or online that results in your mail being sent directly to the criminal.
One of the ways that the Postal Service tries to prevent this type of fraud is by sending a letter to your old address confirming that you wanted your mail sent to a new address, however, this can be circumvented by clever scammers who merely submit a form to the post office on your behalf to hold your mail, as many people do when they are on vacation, which enables the scammer to get extra time before the scam is discovered. Other times, the identity thieves will steal the notice from your mail knowing it is coming.
Making the problem worse is the fact that despite a recommendation from the USPS Office of Inspector General back in 2018 to require some form of identification be presented when someone submits a change of address form, the USPS still does not do so making it extremely easy for an identity thief to perpetrate this crime.
In 2023 New Jersey Congressman Josh Gottheimer took action to try to remedy this problem. He sent a letter to the Postmaster General demanding answers as to how the Postmaster General is going to deal with this problem. Congressman Gottheimer also included in his letter some common sense proposed changes to the present system including requiring a government issued ID in order to change an address, dual factor authentication when address changes are attempted to be made online and the ability for people to freeze address changes just as you can freeze your credit. All of these proposed changes make a lot of sense. Unfortunately, the Postal Service still has not taken any significant steps to respond to the problem.
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Certainly if you get a notice that a change of address form has been filed on your behalf and you have not filed such a form, you should contact the United States Postal Service immediately. Also, if you fail to receive any mail whatsoever for a couple of days, it is important to contact the post office to make sure that no one has changed your address. Remember, even paranoids have enemies.
Another step you can take to protect your mail is to enroll in the Informed Delivery Program. The Informed Delivery Program is a free service of the U.S. Postal Service that will send you an email each morning with images of the mail you will be receiving later that day. In this way, if someone were to have changed your address, you would be alerted to it right away. Here is the link where you can sign up for Informed Delivery https://informeddelivery.usps.com/box/pages/intro/start.action
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Scam of the day – March 17, 2026 – E‑ZPass Toll Scam Alerts: Smishing Fraud Continues to Target Drivers
The E-Z Pass transponder system is available to drivers in twenty states and enables the drivers to avoid stopping to pay tolls when driving on toll roads. Instead they merely drive through a special lane where their transponder is electronically read. The tolls are then charged to a credit card on file with E-Z Pass. It is a very efficient system that works well. It also works well for scammers. In 2014 I told you about scammers sending phishing emails to residents of New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and even Canada where they system is also used. The emails appeared official looking and carried the easily counterfeited logo of E-Z Pass. The message was short and read: “Dear customer, You have not paid for driving on a toll road. This invoice is sent repeatedly, please service your debt in the shortest possible time.” The phishing email of 2014 lured people into clicking on an infected link and providing personal information that would lead to identity theft.
Times have changed, but not that much. In 2021 I first told you how this scam had moved to text messaging rather than emails. Phishing text messages are called “smishing.” Again, the text message indicates that the account is overdue and provides a link to a fraudulent page where victims of the scam provide their credit card information to the scammers. The text message version of this scam became more widespread in 2024 as scammers used phishing kits available for purchase on the Dark Web to create realistic text message scams that appear to come from your state’s E-Z pass system. This week Kansas issued a warning about scammers posing as the Kansas Department of Motor Vehicles or the Kansas Turnpike Authority sending text messages demanding immediate payment of outstanding tolls or unpaid traffic tickets threatening them with a loss of driving privileges if they don’t make immediate payments.
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Never click on links or download attachments in emails or text messages regardless of how official they may appear. You can never be sure as to whether it is legitimate or not. Your best course of action is, if you have any inclination that it may be legitimate, to contact the real company or agency and inquire as to the legitimacy of the contact. The websites the scammers lure you into going to in order to pay the phony overdue tolls often look legitimate, such as myturnpiketollservices.com, however, you can’t trust them.
It is also important to remember that scammers can manipulate your Caller ID through a technique called spoofing to make their text message appear to come from the legitimate number of a legitimate source. Trust me, you can’t trust anyone. If you have any concerns that you may owe tolls, call your E-Z Pass provider for your state making sure you are calling the real number or go to the real website.
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Scam of the day – March 16, 2026 – New Imposter Scam Targets Building Permits: How Criminals Exploit City and County Records
Imposter scams have long been among the most lucrative for scammers. While there are many variations of this scam, the most common variations have involved scammers emailing their victims posing as a popular company with which we all do business or calling their intended victims on the telephone posing as some governmental agency such as the IRS or the Social Security Administration. The scammer then, under a wide variety of pretenses, demands an immediate payment by gift cards, credit card, cryptocurrency or wired funds. Being asked to pay by gift cards or cryptocurrency is a definite indication that the call is a scam since no company or governmental agency requests or accepts payments by gift cards or cryptocurrency.
The FBI recently issued a warning about a new version of the imposter scam in which the scammers are sending emails to businesses and individuals applying for city and county building and zoning permits in which the scammers impersonate city or county planning officials or zoning officials. The emails instruct the targeted victims to send payments for permit-required fees through wire transfers, peer to peer payment apps such as Zelle or Venmo of cryptocurrencies. The emails are very convincing. The scammers target people with pending permits and use the actual case numbers, property addresses and other information of real pending permit applications to appear legitimate. All of this information is readily available online, but it can make the email appear to be trustworthy.
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Trust me, you can’t trust anyone. Whenever you get an email in which a payment is requested you should always independently confirm that it is legitimate before making a payment. In the case of this scam, the first thing to do is to carefully check the email address of the sender. Often the email address is part of a botnet of compromised computers used to send out these emails and the address of the sender doesn’t resemble that of a local or county government email address. In other instances, the email may appear at first blush to be legitimate so even in those instances, you should always confirm with a phone call to the real zoning or building department as to the legitimacy of the email.
The biggest indication that this is a scam is in the method of payment requested. Only scammers demand immediate payment by gift cards, cryptocurrency or peer to peer payment apps. Scammers love these methods of payment because they are the easiest to hide and payments can’t effectively be stopped once initiated.
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Scam of the day – March 15, 2026 – St. Patrick’s Day Scams to Avoid: Fake Tickets, Fake Charities, and Lottery Cons
In two days it will be Saint Patrick’s Day and many people around the world will be celebrating with great gusto. Among those celebrating will be scam artists, the only criminals we refer to as artists who will be taking advantage of the holiday to scam unsuspecting victims.
St. Patrick’s Day is known for big parades and events such as concerts, pub crawls and festivals that require tickets. Scammers sell fake tickets through phony websites or social media posts leaving the ticket purchasers with worthless tickets.
Scammers also use social media campaigns, phone calls and phishing emails posing as charities supporting St. Patrick’s Day causes such as funding parades or helping Irish communities.
Scammers also will be sending emails, text messages or phone calls telling their targeted victims that they have won a St. Patrick related lottery, such as the Irish National Lottery or the Irish Sweepstakes. The only catch is that you have to pay an administrative fee or taxes to collect your prize.
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Fortunately, each of these scams are easy to avoid.
Always buy tickets to any event through the official event website or authorized vendors. You can also check out if a website is legitimate by going to whois.com which will tell you who owns a particular website. If the website for a particular Saint Patrick’s Day event is owned by someone in Nigeria, you can be pretty confident it is a scam.
Trust me, you can’t trust anyone. Whenever you are contacted by phone, email, or text message you can’t be sure who is really contacting you. If you are considering a charitable donation, check out the charity at charitynavigator.org which will tell you if the particular charity is legitimate as well as how much of what they collect actually goes toward the charitable purpose and where to make a donation.
As with all lotteries, it is impossible to win a lottery you never entered and no legitimate lottery requires you to pay an administrative fee to claim your prize. And while income taxes are due on lottery winnings, no legitimate lottery collects income taxes from winners. It either deducts taxes from the winnings as with Powerball or it pays you the entire prize and you are responsible for paying the taxes on your own to the IRS.
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Scam of the day – March 14, 2026 – Gas Pump Skimmers Surge as Many Stations Still Lack EMV Chip Readers
In 2020 the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued a warning about the dangers presented by skimmers on gas pumps. I have warned you about the dangers of skimmers for many years. Skimmers are small electronic devices that are easily installed by an identity thief on gas pumps, ATMs and other card reading devices. The skimmer steals all of the information from old style magnetic strip credit card or debit cards which then enables the identity thief to use that information to access the victim’s credit card or bank account when the skimmer is used on a debit card. Each skimmer can hold information on as many as 2,400 cards.
MasterCard and Visa announced in December of 2016 that the deadline for the installation of EMV chip card readers on gas pumps was being delayed three years to October 1, 2020. This deadline was further delayed due to the Coronavirus pandemic to April 17, 2021 at which time less than half of the gas pumps in the United States complied with the requirement to install EMV chip card readers. And although that deadline has long since passed, due to the cost involved, many gas pumps still are not enabled for your chip credit card.
Wider implementation of the use of EMV chip cards at retail stores where their use has been mandated since 2015 has resulted in a dramatic reduction in data breaches and credit card fraud at retailers using this equipment. EMV chip cards are far safer than the old-style magnetic strip cards. Around the country there has been a dramatic increase in the use of skimmers installed by criminals at gas pumps and while the deadline for gas pumps to install chip readers has passed, many gas pumps still do not use EMV chip card readers and so skimmers at gas pumps continue to be a problem. A 2025 Department of Justice investigation uncovered an organized crime ring that installed skimmers on gas pumps in ten states that stole more than 38,000 credit card numbers.
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One way to avoid the problem is to use contactless payment which may be provided at the pump, however, the Aurora, Colorado police department issued a warning that scammers were drilling holes in the contactless payment screens on gas pumps where you can merely scan your credit card with its RFID chip rather than insert it into any card reader. By damaging the contactless payment screen, it becomes inoperable thereby requiring the customer to use the credit card reader on the gas pump where the identity thief had already installed a skimmer to steal your credit card or debit card information.
Always look for signs of tampering on any machine you use to swipe your credit card or debit card although the more advanced forms of skimmers are installed in the gas pump’s interior and cannot be detected from an inspection of the outside of the pump. Keys to open the gas pumps to allow the installation of the skimmer are readily available online. If the card inserting mechanism appears loose or in any other way tampered, don’t use it. In regard to the contactless payment screen, if it is not working, there is a high likelihood that it may have been tampered with so in that instance pay for your gas inside the gas station office.
Debit cards, when compromised through a skimmer put the customers at risk of having the bank accounts tied to their cards entirely emptied if the theft is not promptly reported and even if the victim reports the theft immediately, the victim loses access to his or her bank account while the matter is investigated by the bank. Debit cards should not be used for purchases at gas pumps. Instead use your credit card and monitor your account regularly to find out early if you have become a victim of this scam. With a credit card, your liability for fraudulent purchases is limited by law to no more than $50 and I am not aware of any credit card companies that hold their customers responsible for any fraudulent purchases. However, fraudulent debit purchases do not come with the same federal legal protection.
When choosing a particular gas pump, you may wish to pick the pump closest to the building and within the sight line of the attendant. Criminals are less likely to install skimmers in pumps where they could be observed making the illegal installation of a skimmer.
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Scam of the day – March 13, 2026 – Smishing Scams Surge: How Fake Bank Text Messages Put Your Accounts at Risk
More and more scams are originating through text messages than phone calls and text message scams in which the scammers pose as your bank were the most common text message scam. Phony text messaging, called smishing, which purport to be from your bank is a scam about which I have been warning you for years, but is a scam that has dramatically increased recently. Scammers have been posing as TD Bank and sending text messages indicating that a major charge has been made to your account and providing you with a link to click on to dispute the charge. If you click on the link you will be taken to a website that appears to be a legitimate website of TD Bank which prompts you to provide your user name and password. Unfortunately, if you do so you will be providing the scammer with full access to your bank account. Here is a copy of the text message being sent.
![DailyMail.com obtained one of the messages that reads: 'TD Alert. There's a pending charge of $1,298.99 on your account, ignore if you initiated, if not follow [link]'](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2025/03/07/19/95962651-14474399-image-a-38_1741376145511.jpg)
Phony text messages like this can be particularly problematic if you have signed up to receive text message alerts from your bank. Whenever you receive a text message you can never be sure who is really sending it to you, so you should never call a telephone number indicated in the text message, provide information or click on links in such text messages which may either download ransomware malware on to your phone or keystroke logging malware that can lead to your becoming a victim of identity theft.
The best course of action when you receive such a text message, if you have a concern that it may be legitimate, is to merely independently contact your bank to determine whether or not the text message was a scam, but be careful that you do not misdial the telephone number of your bank as some scammers purchase phone numbers similar to those of legitimate banks and credit card companies hoping that they will receive calls from unwary consumers who may have merely misdialed the telephone number of their bank or credit card company.
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Regardless of how official such a text message may appear, you should never provide personal information to anyone in response to a telephone call, email or text message because in none of those situations can you be sure that the person contacting you is legitimate. If you do receive a communication from a bank, government agency or any other person or entity that you think might have a legitimate need for personal information from you, you should call the real entity at a telephone number that you know is legitimate in order to ascertain the truth.
Banks do not call, text or email their customers asking for personal information. You should always be skeptical of anyone asking for such information. Of course, if you receive a text message that appears to come from a bank at which you do not have an account, you can be confident it is a scam. If the text message provides for you to respond to stop future texts, don’t do it. Sending such a message to a scammer merely alerts them to the fact that yours is an active phone number.
Another step you should take to prevent your account from being taken over even if someone manages to get your user name and password is to set up dual factor authentication on your bank account.
Finally, although today’s Scam of the day focuses on phony bank text messages, it is a good idea to sign up to receive text alerts from your bank which can be customized for your own particular needs.
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