We've seen a very significant spike in scams over the last couple weeks. Maybe the scammers are saving up for Christmas presents too? Our scam today is one that's been making the rounds the last week, or at least that's when we started seeing it. You'll get a text from a random phone number with an official sounding payment declined message (below). Losing access to NetFlix during lock-down would be devastating to most and the scammers know to play to this fear. Whenever you get something that requires sensitive information (credit card, bank details, insurance details), call that company using a known-good phone number to verify that they actually contacted you.
The Scam Text
Identifying Traits
Incorrect domain. This one comes from "qv02g.com" which is not the domain for Netflix. This could be a link shortener but looks to be a disposable domain purchased for this purpose. This helps them get around filters that watch for known scam/spam sources.
NetFlix does not send account information or issues through text. They will only do this through e-mail.
Even if they did, they would use their own domain (netflix.com).
What It Does
If one were to click the link on a computer it redirects you to Google. On a phone it goes to a rather nice looking fake Netflix site (below). It has animated graphics and works fairly well for a scam site. As usual, please don't click questionable links. Contact us as we'll be happy to check it out for you. We use devices we can wipe and rebuild for this purpose. The fake Netflix site has a questionnaire to make it look official. Please note the website at the top of the image. Not Netflix. After clicking through the questions the site will send you to a scam movie streaming site that will take your credit card information. We didn't give it any credit card info to see if the scam site actually provides anything. After some research it looks like the site pretends to provide a service but doesn't and is impossible to unsubscribe from the service. They do this so the bank will see a service being provided and less likely to block the charges. In general this is a bad situation as you'll need to get a new credit card number during lock-down this close to Christmas.
The Scam Website
