Police Warn All Drivers—Do Not Pay These Speeding Tickets
Do not pay these tickets.
It’s guaranteed to ruin your day. The official notification that you’ve been caught speeding and now face a fine, driving penalties and maybe even a court appearance. But sometimes the consequences can be even worse, as the police now warn.
Speeding tickets are the latest lure from the Chinese SMS machine targeting smartphone users around the world. What started with undelivered packages and then unpaid tolls and non-specific motoring offenses, has now evolved again.
As one Canadian police force warns, “fraudsters are sending text messages claiming recipients must click on a link to pay outstanding speed camera fines. These messages often appear urgent and may look official, but they are designed to steal personal and financial information.” Put even more simply — speeding tickets don’t come by text.
RCMP, meanwhile says, “police organizations do not issue tickets via text messaging, if you receive any suspicious text messages, do not reply and do not click any links.”
Fraudulent speeding text
We have seen the same form of attacks in various U.S. states, with some texts adding that the speeding offense was in a school zone — just to add some spice into the mix.
While the broader motoring offense text attacks that have surged in the U.S. threaten driving bans to frighten recipients into paying without thinking, there’s always something extra when it comes to a specific speeding notification, especially when it suggests you past a camera without noticing, triggering the penalty.
These attacks come to you courtesy of Chinese organized criminal gangs, either directly or via local or overseas gangs renting kits. As Check Point explains “the use of Chinese SOA contacts, Chinese DNS providers, Chinese-language comments in source code, and uniform hosting behavior all point toward a threat actor operating out of China.”
The advice remains the same. As the FBI and other federal, state and local law enforcement warn: “Ignore its instructions and immediately delete it.”