Mike Berry column: That text from the post office wasn't from the post office, it was a scam

It was a scam.

A fairly well-done, authentic-looking scam, but a scam nonetheless.

I’m exposing the scam here so you don’t fall victim to it. (If you already have, you have my sympathy.)

The scam took the form of a text message to my phone. I’ve received previous scam texts, some of which involved ladies wanting to know if I wanted to have a good time.

Assuming the ladies weren’t referring to an evening of playing Scrabble, I just laughed and blocked their number.

But this week’s phony text said, “The address of your package is incorrect and the postman cannot deliver it.” That was followed by a web address for me to click.

This seemed odd; I never heard of the Postal Service sending a text about an undeliverable package. If the address on the package was incorrect, how would they know who to call? Or my unlisted cellphone number?

The first three letters in the link were “usp”, which I assumed was supposed to make me think it was from the U.S. Postal Service. But if it was, why didn’t the address begin “usps?”

Perhaps unwisely, I clicked the link. (Since it was on my phone, “touched” might be a better term than “clicked.”)

The address my phone went to was “uspdividendspg.com”. Is the Postal Service sending me a dividend?

The website looked real enough. It even had the official Postal Service logo, but anyone can copy and paste the logo from the real Postal Service website.

The page asked for my name, address and phone number. They’d texted me; didn’t they already have my number?

I was sure the text wasn’t legit, so I didn’t go any farther with the website. I did take my phone in to the Kewanee Post Office, where the clerk told me that she had already heard that morning from three other people who got the text.

“It’s a scam,” she said.

I showed my phone to her, and she noted that it included a tracking number for my supposedly-undeliverable package. None of the other phony texts that had been reported included a tracking number, she said.

So she checked out the tracking number and confirmed that the text was, indeed, a scam.

Since I didn’t follow any further than the first page of the website, I don’t know if it was created by a Nigerian prince who wanted to send me millions of dollars (if I would send him thousands first) or what.

I did find out that the area code on the phone number associated with the text is in Long Island. It’s no doubt a phony number, but I thought that was interesting.

I blocked the caller, so I shouldn’t have to worry about getting any more of these texts. Unless they use a different phony phone number,

I think it’s safe to say that if you get a text with the above message, you should just ignore it. Block the number if you want.

Of course, if you think you really might have a package coming but they can’t deliver it, you can always go to the post office and get it checked out.

This article originally appeared on Star Courier: That text from the post office wasn't from the post office, it was a scam