Scammers are faking cell towers now; Americans don't spot scams

Mobile carriers are very slowly getting better at detecting and blocking scam texts, but it seems the fraudsters may still be staying ahead of the game.

Scammers are now using a technology known as SMS blasters, backpack-sized devices that can trick smartphones into thinking they are cell towers …

Wired says the technology is not new, but there has been a marked increase in its use.

The most powerful models can spam all phones in a radius of around 3,000 feet, and one blaster was used to send around 100,000 messages per hour.

Cybersecurity expert Cathal Mc Daid says that the devices work because phones can be instructed to drop to an older and far less secure mobile protocol. This is intended for use where 2G and 3G signals are stronger than 4G and 5G ones, but is being exploited by scammers.

Scammers can also spoof the sender to make it appear that the message came from a legitimate organization. As always, you should treat links with great suspicion unless you are specifically expecting a message.

The importance of this message is underlined by a study carried out by NordVPN. This found that Americans scored poorly in their ability to identify phishing scams, as CNET reports.

The company theorizes that this may simply be fatigue from the sheer volume of these in the US.

Photo by Jack Sloop on Unsplash