Buffalo, NY (WBEN) For years, scammers have been spoofing local numbers to try to get you to pick up. Now, they're getting as close to home as it gets by spoofing your own phone number.
"What we're seeing right now is an uptake of a new form of this a very insidious form, where they basically spoof you with your own number," said Cyber Security expert Arun Vishwanath.
Over the past week, more and more people have reported getting a text with a link from their own cell phone number. Many of them are Verizon customers.
Melanie McGovern at the Better Business Bureau said her office got such a text.
"One of our telephones did get this text was that it was saying your bill is paid, click here for a special offer," said McGovern, who added that the link goes to a website asking for your personal information.
The best thing to do if you get one of these messages? Delete it.
"If you do click on it, and you don't delete it, you could have that web page active in the background of your phone if you don't clear out your history on your browser," said McGovern.
Vishwanath agrees the best thing to do is delete the text, because if not, it could lead to a few problems.
"The first thing it could do at the low end is it could signal to the scammer that there really is someone on that number, you don't want to do that, because they're gonna follow it up with more calls and more messages. The second thing it could do, which is now going to uptick in the amount of threat here is they can basically take you to another website, get you to enter passwords, logins, and then they have access to a lot of other things like your banking information."
