How to keep your money safe from text message scams

Text messages warning of financial concerns will prompt users to click on a link or call a number to resolve an urgent matter. But that message is very likely an attempt to extract sensitive information. On the latest episode of PennyWise, host Nat Cardona is joined by Elizabeth Ayoola of NerdWallet to share tips on how to avoid a common text messaging scam.

Read more on NerdWallet here!

About this program

Nat Cardona is host of PennyWise as well as Lee Enterprise's true-crime podcast Late Edition: Crime Beat Chronicles. Lee Enterprises produces many national, regional and sports podcasts. Learn more here.

Episode transcript

Note: The following transcript was created by Adobe Premiere and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically:

Welcome to Pennywise, the Enterprises podcast. I'm your host, Nat Cardona. Today, we're talking scams. There are a million types of scams to choose from, but our focus today are those sneaky little text message scams that find their way to your phone. We have NerdWallet personal finance writer Elizabeth Ayoola with us today, ready to share a few basic but important precautions you can take to ensure that you don't fall prey to a bank impersonation tax scam.

Scams are here. They're everywhere. They come in a million shapes and sizes and formats. Today we're talking about the top tax message scam that's putting your cash at risk. And I was really shocked to find it's under the guise of being your banking institution. So the first thing I want to get into is can you call to lay out what this could look like when it comes to your phone?

Yes. So you may get a text message and someone a strange phone number may send you a link or tell you, hey, you have to call me right away, because if you don't, you're going to lose money or you're going to be locked out of your account. I personally have gotten those messages before. And when it comes to your money, that can create a lot of urgency or fear within yourself because you're like, my God, you know what's going to happen to my money?

And I want to protect my stuff? So sometimes that allows people judgment and the first thing that they do is click on the link or call the number and what the scammer might do on that and is now try to extract sensitive information from you. So it could be your account number, your source code, your Social security number, your address.

And unfortunately what they could do with that information is an array of things they can set up auto pays with your information and deduct money from your account that way. And also in some cases as well, they can actually use your information to get credit cards out or take out loans, which can be terrible for people, which is why it's so important as well to check your credit report regularly, to check your bank information regularly and flag any suspicious information that you see on there.

Right. I've had this actually happen to me personally, but it was under the guise of of what do you call it, a masked phone number. It was the exact same number as my banking institution. I mean, it said the name everything and yeah, and it was the phone number and it was I mean, it's just insane. But the text message I haven't personally seen, so it'll probably pop up with urgency.

But then going off of what you just said is never makamu under pressure like Hastings. Always.

Now I have personally an email. I've actually email scam. I've fallen prey to. And again, it was that urgency. And they said that actually I was getting overpaid in taxes. So my first instinct was really, I'm getting money back. But then I was just like, okay, so they take me to some forum. And again, these things are really sophisticated.

They really mimic the institutions they say they are. And I filled out my account number, my shortcode and everything, and after I did it, I was like, Ooh, this probably was a bad idea. So it's very, very easy to fall prey to that. But just be sure, take a pause, no matter how urgent it is, and call your financial institution to confirm first.

Sure. Which leads me to my next point here. But don't call a number that's texted to you.

Please don't. And in your case, that's crazy because it looks like the same number as your bank.

So it was insane.

Yeah, that's really, really crazy. So definitely go to your Financial institutions website and, you know, get the number directly from there. And a lot of these institutions also have an app, you know, customer servi