The text popped into the iPhone at 10:54 a.m. Tuesday with a direct warning, supposedly from the Illinois secretary of state.
“You are required to update your driver’s license,” the message said.
The message, sent to a Tribune reporter, was fake, part of a prolific and fast-growing text scam that Secretary of State Jesse White’s office said is the most egregious online attack on drivers license holders it has seen.
The phony texts are even landing in phones of secretary of state employees, their families and employees with the FBI.
“It’s pretty outrageous,” said David Druker, White’s spokesman.
The scam is called “SMS phishing” or “smishing” and it is not only showing up with fake messages from the secretary of state, but it is also appearing with phony messages purporting to be from the Illinois Department of Transportation, according to Annie Thompson, a spokeswoman for Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul
“This is definitely on our radar,” Thompson said. “We recommend that people don’t respond to these texts, don’t click on links inside these texts.”
The phony texts — as well as emails — come with a variety of traps designed to lure unwitting recipients into a potential world of computer viruses, stolen password credentials or driver’s license numbers, and identity theft. Hundreds of people have contacted White’s office with questions and complaints about the scam, Druker said. Likewise, IDOT spokesman Guy Tridgell said the agency has received inquiries from likely hundreds of people.
Sometimes the phony links are hooked up to legitimate secretary of state sites or use official images in an effort to give an air of authenticity. But Druker said White’s office would never seek driver’s license information through text or email.
“To be so blatant and taking our material and hijacking it for fraudulent purposes, we take umbrage,” Druker said.
The U.S. Internal Revenue Service has reached out to White’s office because of similarities with scams in other states, Druker said. White also has contacted other government agencies, including the FBI and the Illinois attorney general, Druker said.
Many of the texts are tied to area codes with Illinois numbers. But some Illinois residents have received scam texts from out-of-state area codes.
“I happen to be one of those people,” said Bradley Ware, an FBI community outreach specialist based in Springfield.
He received a text on his personal phone at 6:03 p.m. Wednesday from an area code based in Houston.
Illinois government is far from immune to online problems. Cyberattacks may have diverted more than a billion dollars in unemployment checks intended for people laid off during the pandemic. They have also compromised computer systems in the attorney general’s office and allowed Russians to capture personal voter information at the Illinois State Board of Elections.
So far, White’s office has worked with Google and Microsoft to identify 104 fraudulent websites connected to the prolific scam and placed a warning on 76 of them to alert consumers since problems first arose around April, Druker said.
The office also is working to put labels on the other sites, but they are popping up so quickly that one agency official said combating the websites is like a game of “whack-a-mole.” It is unclear who is behind them, Druker said.
The text sent to a Tribune reporter, like other suspect texts and emails, provided a link that was not to a state website.
But the text also carried a series of red flags, including the typo in the first sentence: “Office of illinois Secretary of State. You are required to update your driver’s license.”
The text also purportedly originated from a “708” Area Code rather than the “217” traditionally associated with Springfield, the state capital, or even a “312? from Chicago, where many state offices are located.
Still another clue was that the driver’s license of the reporter who received the warning wouldn’t expire for nearly two more years.
The text that landed in Ware’s phone Wednesday evening said: “Our records shows that some information is either missing or invalid on your STATE ID/Driver’s License profile. Please update now to avoid identity theft.”
The message ended with an official-sounding signoff, saying it was from the “Office of the Illinois Secretary of State.”
White’s office has seen various questions asking people to verify their driver’s license information, but no one should click on these sites or give personal information, Druker said.
Speaking to the growing prevalence of the texts, Druker said his wife got one of the phony texts over the last few days.
Anyone wanting to contact the secretary of state about the suspicious texts and emails can send inquiries, complaints and pictures of the phony texts to webmaster@ilsos.gov. The secretary of state’s website is Cyberdriveillinois.com. The attorney general’s identity theft hotline is 866-999-5630.
Twitter @RayLong
