A recent scam report by Reboot found that the brands that scammers imitate the most are USPS (15.43%), IRS (11.71%), and Amazon (7.71%) – over 170 other brands were identified.
According to researchers, the most common scam types are account alerts (28.7%), delivery messages (21.1%), and subscription-related messages (14.7%). Over a quarter (24.2%) of links embedded in the analyzed scams contained the subdomain irs.gov.
The most common domain in links embedded in SMS scams is Namecheap.inc (17.3%). One in ten (9.15%) scams signed off with names used ‘Lisa’ as a front.
The most common SMS scam attempts involve preying on urgency and trust. The report has uncovered account alert scams as the most prevalent (575 incidences), followed by delivery scams (422) and subscription scams (294). However, despite their lower frequency, there are many other ways these scamming attempts may manifest, and these niche approaches may be harder to identify as a scam.
