FARMERSBURG, Ind. (WTWO/WAWV) — With the holidays upon us, plenty of folks are making online gift purchases and closely watching their package-tracking emails.
Scammers are aware of this, and are looking to take advantage.
That’s according to the Indiana State Police, who recently warned of imitation emails designed to trick residents into giving up their private information.
In a tweet, ISP Sgt. Ted Bohner explained he received this email after having not made any online purchases.
“FINAL NOTICE: DELIVERY OF THE SUSPENDED PACKAGE” the email reads,. Bohner points out that scammers often use urgency as a way to trick people into acting before they can think it through. The email’s subject line continues the theme of urgency, stating the recipient only has 48 hours with which to retrieve their delivery.
The body of the email reads “with Black Friday quickly approaching, we can no longer hold your package in our warehouse due to limited space. To pay the shipping cost, please go to the next page. This should be done as soon as possible as the package will be returned to the sender if we do not receive your payment within 48 hours.“
Another element scammers will utilize is to make their email seem as legitimate as possible. While many attentive recipients would notice that the logo at the bottom reads “Package Delivery”, some may be just glancing through and see the familiar purple and orange color scheme and font of FedEx and not give it a second thought.
When combined with the possible urgent-mode a reader could be in, the color/font trick can be effective.
Sgt. Bohner continues to advise that when you get an email like this, don’t click on any links in the email, even the ‘unsubscribe’ option at the bottom.
If you received an email like this and are expecting a package, it would be wise to instead navigate to the store or shipping company website independently to track your package rather than click links in an email that could send you to a look-alike site attempting to steal your information.
