Beware of Verizon refund scam following last week's outage
(WJAR) — Were you one of the more than 1 million people impacted by last week's Verizon outage?
You might have a $20 credit coming your way.
But be careful about who's promising you that money!
Bentley University professor and creator of scamicide.com Steve Weisman warns that scammers are trying to capitalize on Verizon’s offer.
“It's the perfect storm for scammers,” explained Weisman. “There's something that's actually legitimate going on that they can latch onto.”
He continued, “Verizon pretty properly said they were going to give a $20 credit to everybody that was effected by it, and they're contacting people by text message, which is kind of unusual.”
Weisman said this text message offer is really easy for scammers to replicate.
“The problem is the scammers are also contacting people, posing as Verizon and saying, 'You have to click on this link,’ or ‘You have to provide your bank account information so we can wire the money to you,’” he explains.
Weisman said because there's no way to tell whether the text message is from Verizon or from a scammer, do not respond.
If you're a Verizon customer who believes you qualify for the $20 credit, log directly into the My Verizon app to claim it.
