Text scamming on the rise

TOLEDO, Ohio - Most have associated cons with fraudulent e-mails, Internet schemes or phone calls.

But now scammers have found yet another way to try to get at your personal information. The trick involves your cell phone as crooks try to take advantage of the growing popularity of phone texting.

In 2008, more than 1 trillion text messages were sent nationwide, but they weren't all from friends and family.

"What's happened is the crooks have discovered this and they have decided they're going to cheat people on texting just like they do on spam or other Internet frauds," said Dick Eppstein, Northwest Ohio Better Business Bureau.

Eppstein said there are several major texting scams the BBB is seeing.

The most common - criminals posing as your bank or credit union. The texts are saying your account's been suspended and ask for personal info to reactivate.

Another big one - a text that appears to be from the unemployment office saying benefits have been suspended.

"This is scary stuff," Eppstein said. "People panic and they immediately respond - 'What do you want to know?', and they're texting back all this private info. Don't do it!"

Eppstein said the red flag is simply that unemployment offices and banks never contact customers using text messages.

Other games the BBB is seeing - texts that say your vehicle warranty is about to expire or credit cards offering a better rate. He recommends just deleting any of these kinds of texts.

But there are legitimate businesses now using texts for advertising, like Vito's pizza texts coupons.

"We really wanted to be greener this year and part of our green incentive is to do our texting and more online, and do less with print and less on paper and just try to do our part from there," said Vito Cortapassi, owner of Vito's Pizza.

Cortapassi said he's not worried about text scams causing problems with his text advertising. He most appreciate the coupons, but if your carrier charges for texts, you can call any location and opt out.

If you're having a lot of problems with unsolicited texts, the Better Business Bureau recommends letting your cell phone carrier know. They can sometimes delete unwanted charges, investigate, or they might even advise changing your phone number.