DHL fraudulent texts. Be careful of this very clever scam .

horusd

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I occasionally use DHL. Got a text today apparently from DHL, it even appears to come in on the same text thread I had used before, but it is fraudulent. The text says your 96 XXX is ready for delivery, but you need to pay the delivery charges of $1.99. The link is to (in this case) a rotary club in Italy and asked CC details etc. I rang DHL, they say it's definitely a scam, but it is very clever as, somehow or other they had my mobile, and they came thru as DHL, so at least initially, I thought it was them. There must have been some data breach. I phoned DHL to make them aware of it.
 
Yeah, it's actually a poor enough attempt. If there was a data breach they would be using more information relevant to you. They certainly wouldn't be quoting a delivery charge in dollars to a Euro-zone recipient, and they'd be unlikely to link to a rotary club in Italy unless that's where a previous order you received originated.
 
Well I assume the rotary club site was hosting the scam payment harvesting content via an unpatched vulnerability.
 
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When thousands of these texts are sent out to random numbers, they are bound to hit lucky with a few who are expecting a package from the named courier. All the main couriers are frequent callers to this house.

A young naive neighbour happily sent her details to pay the €2 /€3 due, they then tried to take I think €1,200 from her account, the only reason it didn't work was as a student she never had anything remotely near that amount in her account.

Her bank informed her that the attempt had been made.
 
Have been getting these texts randomly for the past year - as has my daughter. Always beware.
 
But what happens if you fall for it?

You give them your credit card details and they get €3.

They then use these details to take more from your credit card. But I presume the Credit Card company has to return the money.

Brendan
 
I thought that when chip and PIN came in it pushed more liability onto the card holder for losses due to fraudulent use?
I tried to figure out where liability might lie in this case by reading my PTSB credit card terms & conditions but I am none the wiser and now have a headache.
 
Had an email from an post yesterday.. Another scam requiring me to click on a link and pay 2.99 to claim my parcel
 
Knocking around years !
IMO, thread thread title a smidgen misleading :-

'Be careful of this very clever scam' .
 
But what happens if you fall for it?

You give them your credit card details and they get €3.

They then use these details to take more from your credit card. But I presume the Credit Card company has to return the money.
I don’t know the answer, but would be interested if anyone else knows for sure.

If I stupidly or even naively gave my debit / credit card details to a scammer and was scammed, would the bank reimburse me, if so why is my stupidity or naivety the bank's problem ?

Is there not an onus on me to ensure whoever I give my debit / credit card details to are bona fide ?
 
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But what happens if you fall for it?

You give them your credit card details and they get €3.

They then use these details to take more from your credit card. But I presume the Credit Card company has to return the money.

Brendan
I assume they may attempt to take a larger amount, but I don't know. It had a curious, probably fake, link to some rotary club in Italy. I imagine the CC company would stump up, but who knows? What made it "clever" was it came in on an SMS message feed I already had from DHL and, like many people, I'm an online shopper receiving deliveries regularly from DHL, so it seemed legit. I'm no expert on these scams, but the fact they had what appeared to be a legit SMS source, and that I do indeed use DHL, indicated that there may have been a security breach, but I don't know for sure.
 
What made it "clever" was it came in on an SMS message feed I already had from DHL
Not 'having a go' at you but feigning origins of SMS's has also been knocking around for years.
The fact that you use DHL I agree doesn't help in spotting the scam, but you may well get one purporting to be from Fedex/UPS etc. tomorrow or the day after.........

Have you ever actually received a text from DHL demanding money and providing a 'pay here' link ?
 
Unfortunately I have received legitimate texts from DHL with payment links, demanding customs duty for inbound parcels. At least it's better than the UPS procedure, which is to turn up at your door and demand exact cash.
 
Unfortunately I have received legitimate texts from DHL with payment links
That's crazy in this day and age of so many scam texts!

Only this afternoon my daughter received a text and an Email from anPost informing her that a sum of money was due on a parcel for her coming from the UK.
It included the senders name and address, receivers name and address, the tracking number, a reference number and my daughters Email address.
It stated that this fee could be paid at any post office or online by going to anPost website and search for payments due and quote the reference number.

The point I'm making is that this text contained a lot more pertinent information and no link to click.
A lot more than just 'We have your parcel but before we deliver it you have to pay €x.xx. Click here to pay'. Or something similarly as vague.
 
Agreed. In fairness DHL may well have improved their texts since I last imported something dutiable with them pre-COVID. Even then, they did quote a tracking number which could be verified on the main DHL website.

A few years ago I got a phone call from a DHL courier nearby as the text hadn't arrived in time - which certainly created a sense of urgency to pay, often a mark of scams.

The payments industry takes this stuff very seriously. I know someone whose job it is to visit smishing/phishing sites (such as fake courier payment pages) in order to identify the merchant bank involved and get the payment processing capability shutdown.
 
We got a pre recorded call to our mobile phone. Person said he had a parcel for us but no address to deliver. He wanted our Eircode so he could deliver.

Was this some sort of phishing scam to match our phone number with our Eircode?
 
If I stupidly or even naively gave my debit / credit card details to a scammer and was scammed, would the bank reimburse me, if so why is my stupidity or naivety the bank's problem ?
Even though they usually reimburse you, their T&Cs state that you can be held liable for loss where you authorise the transaction. The CVV number on cards was introduced to transfer risk to the card-holder.
 
If it's an online transaction and the merchant can't prove you authorised payment for the full amount (via 3-D Secure authentication or similar) then the merchant should be liable. Even if you provided your card details + CVV.

The CVV on its own should not be enough for a liability shift to the cardholder.

But I'm not certain how this pans out in practice if your bank can't recover funds from the merchant because they've shutdown.
 
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