Bogus Wells SMS

Posted: February 23, 2024 | | Categories: Miscellaneous

I got a spam, malware, phishing text message today that said it was from Wells Fargo but I knew better. After looking at it for a couple of seconds, I had to laugh then write about it. Here's the message I received:

First of all, I'm not a Wells Fargo customer so that was my first clue that this was a phishing message or something.

Next, I looked at the phone number: +1 141 020 0504

The last time I checked, 141 isn't a US area code. From what I remember, area codes can't begin with a 0 or a 1. Neither is 020 a valid NNX. From NANPA, the first reference I found using Google:

A Central Office (CO) code or NXX code refers to the second three digits (also called digits D-E-F) of a ten-digit telephone number in the form of NPA-NXX-XXXX, where N represents any one of the numbers 2 through 9 and X represents any one of the numbers 0 through 9.

So why would Wells Fargo send me a text message about 'my account' from outside the country? Yeah, they wouldn't.

What made me laugh was that it was apparently from Wells Farqo (that's a Q instead of the G in Wells Fargo) but the transaction amount had a dollar sign with some interesting character choices in it: $/416,63. I'm not sure what the / is for, that's not part of a currency value in the US. But the comma for a decimal separator was the funniest part as we use periods, not commas, to separate dollars and cents.

This just proves that all you have to do is look just for a few seconds to identify spam or dangerous messages. When you can clearly see it's not a US phone number nor is it an American formatted currency amount, it's time to report the message to your phone company.

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