FBI Warns Idahoans to Delete Dangerous New Scam Text Immediately

How many times have you had to complete a cyber security training for your job? The more of those courses we’re forced to suffer through, the smarter Idahoans become when it comes to being on the lookout for scams. 

And as a result? Scammers have to evolve and come up with new tricks to convince unsuspecting Idahoans to cough up sensitive data like passwords, credit card numbers or bank account information.

READ MORE: Postal Service Warns Idaho Citizens About Malicious 'Smishing' Scam

There’s one particular scam that’s gotten so out of hand over the past month, that the FBI has issued a new warning for the new “smishing” scam. 

What is a Smishing Scam?

This isn’t the first time that you’ve seen us use the word “smishing.” Last year, we told you the United State Postal Service was being implicated in one of these scams. Since it’s been a couple of months, we’ll give you a refresher course. 

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You’re likely familiar with the concept of a “phishing” scam. This is when a scammer will spoof popular companies like Amazon, Home Depot or Walmart and send you an official looking order confirmation, shipping or delivery attempt notification. We’ve seen two different versions of this scam. 

The first is a fake delivery attempt notification where the scammers say that there was a problem with your delivery and you’ll need to log-in to your account to stop the package from being “returned to sender.” It includes a link to log-in, but the link takes you to a fraudulent page where the scammers will swipe your username, password or credit card number. 

The second is a fake order confirmation email. One appeared in our work email inbox claiming that we ordered nearly $2,000 in modems and routers. Our first reaction was to panic, but then we realized…our work email address isn’t associated with an Amazon account and there’s no stored payment methods there. We reported it as a “phishing” scam and moved on unscathed. 

Smishing scams are similar, but instead of reaching you via email, they come to you via a text message. The scam is called “smishing” because text messages are sent via “Short Message Service” also known as SMS. 

New Smishing Scam Prompts FBI Warning

 According to ABC News, the FBI has received more than 2,000 complaints in a single month from people who have received fraudulent text messages claiming that the person on the receiving end has an unpaid road toll. 

We’ve personally received three of these in 2025. This one was sent on January 20. 

A second arrived exactly a month later on February 20. 

And this third one had the most legitimate looking URL of all three. We’re assuming we were targeted by that one because we still have an Ohio area code, but we haven’t driven a vehicle registered to our name in the Buckeye state in 15 years. 

We’re pretty tech savvy, so the fact that the sender’s information looked scammy kept us from taking further action. However, we’re very worried that our less than tech savvy parents could fall for something like this. 

ABC News spoke to a Cybersecurity firm that said the bad actors behind this particular smishing scam had registered over 10,000 domains to send out to unsuspecting users. They’ve impersonated toll services in 10 states. 

Newsweek says that if you receive one of these texts, the FBI recommends the following:

• Do not click links or respond. If you do, you’re giving scammers confirmation that your phone number is indeed active and they may try to hit you with more scams.
• Call the toll agency directly if you feel there is a chance that you may owe money.
• Report the scam to the FBI using this link www.ic3.gov
• Delete the text so that you don’t accidentally interact with it again. 

The Big Red Flag for Idahoans

Unless you’ve been traveling, the biggest red flag for Idahoans should be the fact that we are one of the handful of states that does NOT currently have any toll roads.