Israel’s war with Hamas resumes with airstrikes in Gaza after a weeklong truce endsNorman Lear, producer of TV’s ‘All in the Family’ and influential liberal advocate, has died at 101
One of the scam “package tracking” texts more and more Americans have been receiving. Credit: WINK News The pending delivery message may look real: “We found a package for you.” Susan Kurtz woke up Sep. 3 to a text just like it. “It said ‘Final notice of a package’ that has been trying to be delivered to me since March 10, I think it said,” Kurtz said. “Yeah, some crazy date a long time ago.” But she was skeptical from previous scam attempts. “I thought it was suspicious, so I went to USPS.com and I typed in the tracking number and nothing came up,” Kurtz said. Kurtz is one of countless Americans who have received this same type of text in recent days. “This one even had me think—so it even had me go to the USPS site to track it just to make sure, because it said ‘final notice’ and I didn’t want to miss anything,” Kurtz said. “But yeah, I’m sure people are going to fall for it, unfortunately.” The text messages are on the radar of Jimmy Patronis, Florida’s chief financial officer. He worries scams like this one are on the rise as more Americans pay bills and shop online during the pandemic. “I’ve been home with my children since the pandemic broke out, so we have ordered probably two to three times more than we normally do online,” Kurtz said. Patronis says what Kurtz did is exactly right. If you get a text you believe might be a scam, call the company attached to the text using a phone number you know is real.