I have a credit card through BofA - have had it for over 40 years (through other incarnations of banks which eventually got acquired by them). I keep it because it’s convenient to have a spare card, and also it really increases the average of my accounts!
Over the past few days, I’ve gotten frequent text messages from them: Every afternoon this week, in fact, except yesterday which was Veteran’s Day (as in, banks closed).
BofA: Financial centers in your area may be temporarily closed or hours may be modified.
For latest info, visit our website. TextSTOPtoStop"
That last bit, with no spaces, is verbatim. It comes from a 6-digit number vs a real phone number but that’s not a big deal, I have numerous text alerts for other purposes that look like that. There’s no link. Any idea what on earth this is about?
There’s nothing on BoA’s website about closed financial centers. It’s a scam.
Don’t respond: If you’re not 100% certain of the source of the call, email or text, then hang up the phone, don’t click on the link in the email and don’t reply to the text message.
We’ve all become pretty accustomed to verification codes. If a company or website needs to verify your identity, they will commonly send a text message with a 6-digit verification code, which you then need to enter on the website to prove that you are the person you say you are. (Really, it just proves that you have access to that person’s phone, but usually that’s good enough).
But now, the scammers are using the verification code process for their own nefarious purposes. Specifically, they want to create new online accounts, such as a Craigslist account, using YOUR phone number.
Interesting. I’d like to believe I would not fall for the verification code scam as described.
The BofA texts are still puzzling. Aside from validating that they’ve hit a real phone number (if I did the STOP text), there’s no other way they could be abused as far as I can tell. No clickable link. No verification code.
An annoyance I’ve spotted with other scam texts: I’ll see the text pop up - and a MESSAGE READ request is automatically sent. I can’t control that on my end, it is only controlled by the sender. That’s a bit horrifying, that we cannot control that.
I am a BoA customer and have not received any of these. The only reason I can imagine is that the are somehow harvesting phone numbers by recording the STOP responses, and then maybe selling the lists to robocallers or something. I don’t know how that message or a STOP reply per se would be unsafe. But my carrier has a feature where I can report texts as spam, which is what I would do.
I do not see that, and I cannot tell if someone else read one of my messages (Android phone). Are you in the Appleverse?
I’m also on Android. When I first spotted this, the only thing I could find to do is on the sender’s side, though some more googling suggests I can do something about it on my side as well (though I have not tested it yet).