I’m so offended by the texts and emails I receive which are clearly from scammers. I don’t want you to be a victim, so let me describe some of them.
At least once or twice a day I get an email labeled “payment notification,” “deposit notification,” “ACH transfer completed,” or something similar with no message, only an attachment. But the attachment is not a PDF or document, it’s a file with the suffix “.htm” or “.html,” signifying that it’s a website. I could be pretty sure that by clicking on that link I would have my computer or iPhone infected with some kind of coding which would open me up to identity theft or worse. Don’t click on any link that’s a website! Another frequent email scam pretends to be from Microsoft stating that my password is about to expire. If I click on the link it will, of course, ask for my password! Here’s a screenshot from my Scam folder where I have been archiving the scam emails I receive:


Text messages are an increasing source of dubious and unsavory contacts. Many of them simply try to start a conversation with a greeting (a particularly clever such text message is shown at right), but the phone number is from a strange area code. Delete those! If it’s a real person, they will call you if you’ve ignored the text.
Be careful out there!