"Smishing" New Threat For Texts and Email Scam

“For the first five seconds, you’re like, ‘Oh no!’ You’re caught off guard,” he said. “It was an automated computer voice and very well done, very sophisticated.”

Sever experienced a spreading high-tech con known as “smishing.”

Smishing is like phishing, a technique that uses e-mails that look legitimate to trick victims into handing over vital information, but with smishing, identity thieves ply their scam through messages to a mobile phone, not a computer.

With recent attacks in the western U.S., law enforcement and consumer affairs officials have expressed concern that similar large-scale attacks could spread nationally.

FBI spokesman Tim Ryan, supervisor of cyber investigations for the FBI’s Newark division, based in Franklin, N.J., said the message Sever received is part of an open case.

In the recent spate of scams in the West, identity thieves sent text messages en masse to random cellphones that read: “Wells Fargo notice: Your card 4868* has been deactivated.” The message listed a phone number.

People who dialed the number were asked for account information, Social Security numbers and personal identification numbers, officials said.

The crooks cast a broad net. Many people other than Wells Fargo customers got the messages.