Seattle - The Federal Communications Commission is working through an increasing number of complaints about spam text messages.
The FCC reported that it received more than 18,000 complaints about spam texts last year – which typically come from unfamiliar contacts, including some numbers that appear to be "invalid" or "unused."
Cybersecurity experts are warning people that if they aren’t careful with those texts, their cell phones could get hacked, putting important information, or money, at risk.
"I was just going to be adamant about ‘delete and block, delete and block, delete and block,’" Jack Whipple said. "All day long."
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Whipple said he has received more spam texts over the last year than ever before, and that the spam texts range from group chats to individual numbers pretending to be someone he knows.
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"Those are kind of insidious because it really does sound like it’s coming from a friend of yours," he said.
Americans received more than 225 billion spam texts last year, according to Robokiller. That’s up from 88 billion during the year before.
"It’s very easy to get lists of phone numbers or even send them to every possible combination of phone numbers," said cybersecurity expert Alex Hammerstone. "It’s very cheap, the technology’s there and the payoffs can be huge."
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Whipple hasn’t lost any money to fraud from the spam texts he has received, and he said he has made sure not to give out any of his financial information.
"If somebody is asking you for anything to do with your bank account or Social Security number or dollars, why would you respond in a text?" Whipple said.
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Robokiller also reported that Americans lost more than $20 billion to scams sent in spam texts during 2022 – more than doubling the nearly $10 billion lost in 2021.
