PENNSYLVANIA, USA — Scammers are always trying to catch us off guard, which is why delivery scams seem to work so well for the bad guys.
FOX43 Finds Out how the crooks are using a legal loophole to get your money.
You get a message related to an issue - or maybe just a confirmation - about a package that has yet to be delivered.
A lot of us are ordering online these days - and maybe you won't question it.
So, you click the link.
That's where your problem begins.
"Don't click the links, they are always fake," said Richard Gargan, the Digital PR manager BeenVerified.
He says complaints related to delivery scams masked as a message from UPS, FedEx, Amazon, or a number of other carriers have recently skyrocketed.
"Once stay at home orders started to happen and scammers quickly pivoted to delivery scams essentially, with people working from home and especially during the holiday season when packages are delivered - that's what the scammers were doing."
BeenVerified found delivery scams to be even more common than social security fraud in 2020, which has been the most popular scam for years.
"They're always preying on things like lack of time. people are busy."
Often, there will be a link with that scam message. If you click it, you could be signing up for something you don't want.
"There's a lot of fake streaming services where you think you're typing in your $2 delivery fee, but in the small print you're really signing up for a streaming service for like $50 or $100 a month," said Gargan.
If terms and conditions pop up and you don't read it, but hit "ok" you could be unknowingly signing up for something impossible to cancel.
Gargan said, "The scammers can claim that it's a legitimate service that you signed up for and that it was all explained in the terms and conditions."
If it's not a ploy to get you to sign up and pay for some bogus service, it could be downloading malware on your device.
Gargan thinks as we continue to do all sorts of shopping online this type of scam will only become more sophisticated.
"I think this is only going to get worse."
Here's another tidbit about these delivery scams.
In the past year, BeenVerified has found that android phones have a higher chance of getting malware installed through these scams than iPhones.
As for why that's happening, they're not quite sure.
It is a reminder though to check your privacy and security settings on your phone and always make sure you're using the most up to date operating system.
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