Greg's Corner

Postal delivery scam back in time for holidays

By Greg Collier

The delivery scam really never went away. It was insanely popular with scammers during the pandemic, when we were supposed to be sheltering at home. Since then, there have been reports of this scam, but nowhere near as many as during the pandemic. However, with the holiday season on the horizon, this scam has started to pick up steam again.

Since many of us will be expecting packages delivered to our homes for the holidays, scammers are betting on people being paranoid about the delivery itself. Several regions across the US are reporting an increase in scam text messages that claim to be from the United States Postal Service. These messages say you missed a delivery to your home, or it will say that the package address wasn’t clear enough.

The message contains a link to click on, so you can supposedly reschedule the delivery. In previous instances of this scam, if you click the link, you’d be taken to a website that looks like the USPS website but isn’t. You’d then be asked to enter your financial information because there is a redelivery fee of $3.00. From here, the scammers would use your financial information to steal as much as they can from you before you notice.

If you receive a text message like this, think about it for a moment. Did you give the post office your phone number? You probably didn’t and there’s no way for them to find it. The days of the White Pages are over. In general, government services are not in the habit of calling or texting their users. In the majority of cases, if there’s a problem with the service, you need to go to them.

The best way to protect yourself from this scam is to not click on any links in text messages from people you don’t know personally. You can also sign up for the USPS Informed Delivery service, so you can know exactly when a delivery is expected to be delivered to your home.