Here’s what to look out for with text scams - and what you can do. “Spam texts are just increasing at a much more drastic rate than spam calls.” “Scammers are always looking for the next big thing,” said Giulia Porter, a vice president at Teltech. In addition, industrywide and government efforts to crack down on robocalls may be pushing scammers to move on to text messages. Their rise has been fueled partly by the fact that messages are so effortless to send, Teltech said. Text scams vary widely but often involve getting you to cough up your personal data with messages disguised as tracking updates for phony package deliveries, or information about health products and online banking. But text spam affects all wireless subscribers, and carriers now offer resources online for how people can protect themselves and report spam. Representatives for AT&T and T-Mobile said they had not seen the same problem. “We have blocked the source of the recent text messaging scheme in which bad actors were sending fraudulent text messages to Verizon customers which appeared to come from the recipient’s own number,” said Adria Tomaszewski, a Verizon spokeswoman. On Monday, it said it had fixed the problem. Verizon confirmed that it was investigating the text issue. That outpaced robocalls, which rose 20 percent in the same period, according to an analysis by Teltech, which makes anti-spam tools for phones. In March, 11.6 billion scam messages were sent on American wireless networks, up 30 percent from February. Spam texts from all sorts of phone numbers - and not just your own - are on the rise. Only recently has mobile phone fraud shifted more toward texting, experts said. Consumers have struggled with cellphone spam for years, primarily in the form of robocalls with scammers incessantly ringing to leave fraudulent messages about late payments for student loans, audits by the Internal Revenue Service and expired car warranties.
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