There's a new scam: Fake toll bills

A new scam has been going around where people got texts saying that they must pay bills for a toll. This scam is pretty easy to spot because of a few obvious signs.

Example 1

This is an example I got. It is also the best example I have received, partly because it didn't get marked as spam (I marked it as spam myself).

The first giveaway, which may be difficult to see in this screenshot because the phone numbers are removed, is that the message was sent to a group. Commercial messages are always sent to individual people, not groups.

The second giveaway is that the link is a bitly link. These are useful to scammers because they obfuscate the real domain, along with getting around spam filters.

The next giveaway is that toll companies don't text. If you have a bill you need to pay for a toll, they will send you physical mail, they won't ever text you.

The final giveaway is that almost every large company will use a toll-free number. The phone number is not visible here, but it is not toll free, i.e., it doesn't begin with (800).

The next examples, however, are not as sneaky as this one, but they use the same techniques.

Example 2

This one is slightly worse than the first one, and was correctly marked as spam automatically by my phone. Again, it was sent to a group, used a bitly link, and was a non-toll-free number.

Example 3

This is the worst one. It was marked as spam automatically (if it wasn't, I would have been extremely disappointed). The part that makes it the worst is that it uses an excessive amount of emojis.