Experts: How To Spot Money Scams Via Email and Text Messaging

Heather Taylor  Thu, April 27, 2023

Have you ever received a text message or email making an unusual money request? This is a type of social engineering scam often referred to as phishing, and it is quickly becoming all too common among the masses.  According to Kevin Lee, VP of trust and safety at Sift, 98% of cybercrime involves social engineering. Fraudsters using social engineering scams will trick or manipulate people into revealing confidential information including passwords, credit card numbers or other credentials. Cybercriminals will use this information to commit payment fraud or account takeover (ATO) attacks. According to a recent Sift report, ATO attacks jumped by 131% in the first half of 2022.

As phishing and money scams become increasingly convincing, what can people do to protect themselves? Here’s how you can spot money scams through email and text messaging and what to do next if you think you’re the target of a scammer.

Signs of a Money Scam

The next time you receive an unusual or suspicious text or email, keep your eyes peeled for the following signs of a social engineering scam.

Sense of Urgency

One of the most common tactics fraudsters use is creating a sense of urgency.

This is an attempt to prompt you to quickly take action without thinking all the way through about the text or email you just received. Lee uses the example of receiving a text that says your bank account will be shut down unless you immediately share a password, download something or click a link.

Grammatical Errors

Grammatical errors are common red flags indicating scammy messages. These will include obvious misspellings or strange wording and can easily be spotted.

Mismatching Sender Email and Domain Name

Look out for sender emails and domain names that don’t match. “It’s important to pay attention to missing letters or numbers that stand in for letters, like the number 0 instead of an O,” Lee said.

Jason Zirkle, certified fraud examiner (CFE) at the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE), said to keep an eye out to see whether the sender’s email address looks like a suspicious variation of a well-known company. A good example is receiving an email from “Google” that has the email address google-support-us.com.

Texts or Emails “Claiming” Something

Zirkle said you can spot money scams through texts or emails “claiming” the following have happened:

You won a prize in a contest, even if you don’t remember entering the contest.

The email or text is from law enforcement or a government agency.

The text or email claims it is from a shipping company, like UPS or FedEx, and it needs you to click on a tracking link.

Zirkle said, “Any text messages asking you to click a link, no matter who they purport to be from, are a red flag.”

Email Attachments

Do not open or download any attachments you are not expecting in an email.

Hyperlinks in Email

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