The St. Martin Parish Sheriff's Office is alerting residents to a scam making the rounds in the area and even nationally.
According to the Sheriff's Office, residents are sent a text or email disguised as a delivery notification. The text includes a tracking number and usually appear to be sent from FedEx or Amazon.
The text includes a link to set "delivery preferences." The Sheriff's Office says that link allegedly contains malware that can infect a device and give the sender access to all information on the device. The link also sends the user to a page that asks for identifying information, including credit card information.
Users who receive these texts should delete them immediately and contact the company the text is supposedly from.
FedEx shared a statement with ABC News in response to the recent rash of text scams:
We are committed to protecting the security and integrity of our network. While there is no foolproof method to prevent the FedEx name from being used in a scam, we are constantly monitoring for such activity and work cooperatively with law enforcement. FedEx does not send unsolicited text messages or emails to customers requesting money or package or personal information. Any suspicious text messages or emails should be deleted without being opened, and reported to abuse@fedex.com
FedEx offered some tips to help recognize a scam:
- Requests for money
- Misspelled or altered website addresses
- Requests for immediate information
- Spelling or grammatical errors
