Thousands of people in our state got a late-night buzz on their cellphones Wednesday from a text message trying to pick their pockets.
“I thought it was kind of odd; I just simply deleted it because it didn't make any sense,” said Boeing Employee Credit Union customer Phil Kneedler.
It claims to be an "Important Notification," claims, "Your BECU DEBIT GOLD CARD has been restricted." It then gives a phone number to call.
When we called the number, we got this robotic sounding message:
“Please note, during this process, live assistance will be unavailable…now enter your 16-digit card number, no spaces or dashes.”
BECU's guard is up.
“My daughter, one daughter of my two daughters, actually did get the text," said BECU spokesman Todd Pietzsch.
Pietzch is reassuring customers.
“Has BECU information been compromised? No, it has not been compromised,” he said.
In fact many of those getting the texts aren't BECU customers at all, but since BECU has 900,000 customers, “they know if they robo-dial enough people, they're going to eventually get quite a few BECU members,” Pietzsch said.
That's why locally based Christopher Budd of Trend Micro said text-spamming is difficult to stop.
“A 95 percent failure rate is still a 5 percent success rate, and that more than makes up your cost,” Budd said.
Budd and BECU’s Pietzsch remind consumers that banks don’t need to send a late-night text to ask for your credit card number -- they already have it.
KIRO
