Scam text with personal information sent to some Ontario residents

Published June 27, 2021 at 6:55 pm

While scam texts have become a fairly often occurence, some crafty scammers are starting to use personal information in their text messages.

A Mississauga resident recently reported getting a text scam with their name in it, alleging they had won an unspecified gift.

The scammer also knew that the resident was from Mississauga.

The message looks like this (name blocked out):

Scammers can get ahold of your personal information in a variety of ways, including a massive Facebook leak back in April that led to 533 million Facebook users’ phone numbers and personal data getting posted on a low-level hacking forum.

The leaked information included the phone numbers, full names, locations, email addresses, and biographical information of Facebook users from at least 106 countries.

Residents who get this text are advised to avoid clicking the links and delete the message/block the number it came from.

insauga's Editorial Standards and Policies advertising