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Smishing alert - Venmo users targeted by text messages scams

Wednesday 18 September 2019 10:00 CET | News

A local police department in the US have sent warnings of a wave of phishing frauds targeting Venmo mobile payment service users with text messages that direct to a fake website.

Phishing over SMS messages is also known as smishing. Fraudsters use text messages to deliver links to a fake website that collects personal and banking information. The message informs the potential victim that their Venmo account will be charged unless they decline the operation.

The link to the Venmo phishing page is conveniently delivered in the text offering a quick way get into the account, Dighton Police Department in Massachusetts warns. Even if the credentials are incorrect, the scam login process continues to a step where users are asked to verify themselves by typing in the number for the payment card along with additional personal and financial information.

A post on Facebook from Dighton PD says that the fraudulent page ‘uses the same colours and fonts as the Venmo app’, to avoid raising any suspicions, according to Bleeping Computer.


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Keywords: smishing, phishing, Venmo, P2P, fraud prevention, messages, scams, fraudsters, US, online security, financial data
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