Zelle Payment Scam
This scam is very interesting because you might not even realize that a lot of banks, possibly even your bank, uses Zelle and may have automatically signed you up so you can receive payments or send payments through Zelle, even though you never really made an account for it. And that's what the scammers take advantage of.
How this scam works?
Scammers will send out mass text messages to a whole bunch of people and it'll say something like, "FRAUD DETECTED, IF YOU DID NOT MAKE THIS CHARGE FOR WHATEVER AMOUNT OF DOLLARS, REPLY NO OR YES". And no matter what you respond, if you do respond at all, they will then call you from a spoofed number to look like the bank and pretend to be the bank's fraud department. Then they'll say something like, "Oh, We Need To Verify Your Identity" and they'll ask for your bank username, not your password, which some people might be thrown off by. And the reason for this is what they’re going to try and do is go through the password reset process with you on the phone, but you don't realize that's what's happening. So they basically go onto the bank's website, put in the username you just gave them and say forgot password, which will then, with Zelle at least apparently trigger a text message to be sent to the phone number associated with it. Which again, is your number, but you might not realize that it is. And what they'll say is, "OH, I'M GOING TO BE SENDING YOU A SMS MESSAGE WITH A VERIFICATION CODE, AND YOU'LL HAVE TO READ THAT BACK TO ME TO MAKE SURE YOU'RE LEGIT".
And unbeknownst to you, that's not a verification text code; it's a code to reset your password. Anyway, so once they get this number, they basically are able to get into your bank account and potentially even change your password. And because Zelle is tied to your bank account usually; they can use this to send money out of it. Now, I believe in some scenarios when they do go to try and transfer money out, it will also trigger another confirmation text message. So what they'll probably do is keep you on the line, and they'll say that, "HEY YOU'RE GOING TO GET A TEXT MESSAGE AND IT'S THE REFUND CONFIRMATION. SO YOU HAVE TO MAKE SURE THAT YOU CONFIRM IT BECAUSE I'M SENDING THE MONEY BACK INTO YOUR ACCOUNT THAT WAS STOLEN" or something like that.
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| Zelle Payment Scam |
Meanwhile no, it's actually a confirmation for money coming out of your account to the scammer. So you have to be aware of that, that they will say really anything to get you to put in these codes or confirm the text message. And this one is actually part of a larger trend of scammers realizing they can get around two factor authentication using SMS codes, because a lot of websites stupidly basically make it so a text message turns into a one factor authentication, where you can reset your password with nothing but the confirmation code on your phone, which then opens up the possibility of scammers simply asking people for it. And even though usually it says, never share this code with anyone, people apparently do it anyway. And what's actually apparently really bad about this one, is a lot of banks they say in their terms of service that the Zelle transfer doesn't actually get covered under certain fraud terms. So you kind of might just be out that money. So definitely be aware of this one.
Keywords: email fraud, ad fraud, anti phishing software, payment fraud, phishing training, google phishing, fraud protection.
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