Have you ever received a text message containing a link that leads you to a load of cash prizes, exciting job offers, bank loans, or even various link products? Well if you ever did, it looks like you are one among mobile phone users who have been receiving various spam messages over the past year. While getting a text from a wrong number can be a normal occurrence, constantly receiving the same type of messages from different unknown and unregistered numbers is more than enough for one to question their own safety and privacy as a mobile user.
Last year, the country had been flooded with a sudden increase in spam messages offering fake jobs with great wages due to the increasing unemployment rate of the country because of the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, these types of spam messages are taking advantage of unemployed Filipinos who are in a desperate situation to land a job. And this year, these spam messages have grown into a much wider and bigger scale as it now targets a lot of phone users from fake job offerings to securing bank loans, and other ways just to get a hold of a user’s information.
Receiving this kind of text message once in a while is one thing but imagine receiving a lot of spam messages in one day. This can lead to users losing the energy to deal with this situation. In a tweet shared by Twitter user and Grupo Agatep president and managing director Norman Agatep, he frustratingly shares that he receives around 5 different text messages daily with various offers, and wonders how should he deal with it.
Every day I receive about 5 SMS invitations to receive money through new job opportunities, or low interest loans, or gambling. What did I do to deserve this? Groan.
— Norman Agatep (@normanagatep) June 6, 2022
With the alarming increase in these spam and phishing messages, it is highly important for users to be able to identify these text messages immediately. Scam text messages are usually structured with an engaging message offering a too good to be true job offer, easy bank application for loans, or saying that you have won cash and raffle prizes. This is followed by suspicious links that will direct you to a website or any online forms that will ask for your personal information. Most spam messages greatly involve some type of money, or even from numbers that will pretend to be your relative asking for some load and cash. And these messages will come from an 11-digit mobile number.
If you have received this kind of text message, here are some reminders and tips that you can do in order to assure your safety and privacy as a mobile user:
Do not click the links
The links included in these messages are most likely curated to make it seem like an official link provided by a company or other organizations. Moreover, these links will also lead you to what can look like an official website or application that will entice users to believe the message.
If you encounter a situation like this, you must remember that any private companies, banks, or government agencies and organizations will not do a transaction through text messaging so we have to remind ourselves to be careful.
Do not provide personal information
Other text messages will also ask you to provide personal information. These messages can come from unknown numbers pretending to be your relatives or friends who are in trouble and asking for some money. Or this can also come from numbers who are actually using official company names (such as your network provider or bank) but are actually scammers.
If you receive this kind of message, you must be aware that any organizations or companies will never ask you to provide your personal details such as complete name and address, personal email addresses, bank details (credit cards and ATM cards), government ID numbers, and other confidential information through text messaging.
Block and report unknown numbers
If you have been receiving these text messages from the same unknown phone numbers, one effective way to finally get rid of these messages and stop getting them is to block and report them, depending on your service provider. In this way, they can never contact or message you again.
Activate message filters
A great way to minimize receiving these messages, especially if they come from different numbers, is to activate message filtering on your phone settings. By enabling the option of filtering messages, you won’t be notified anymore when you receive spam text messages from suspicious senders, instead it sorts your messages between your contact list and a separate tab, the “unknown senders” messages list.
To activate this on an Android device, enable this feature through Google Messages and click on the three dots located next to the search bar of your messages app. Proceed to settings, and tap Spam Protection, where you will see the button that enables the feature.
For iPhone, go to settings, click on Messages, then scroll down until you see Message Filtering. Proceed to turn on the button that says, “Filter Unknown Senders” to enable the feature.
However, enabling this feature also means that phone numbers that are not saved on your contact list will be filtered, thus you must still regularly check whether you have missed important messages because of the filtering.
While these reminders are important for us to stay vigilant and aware, we can only do so much in eradicating these dangerous messages, as the government and telecommunications companies are the ones that can come up with a solution to put a stop to this alarming situation. For now, as we live in the digital age, where our personal data at most vulnerable, practicing these measures and precautions can greatly help us ensure our safety, and also remind other people who can be easily encouraged in engaging in these sorts of scams to be careful.
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