Scams are on the rise, and even social media influencers aren’t safe from them. In a recent social media post, YouTuber Fuslie, real name Leslie Fu, opened up about her online scamming experience, revealing to her followers that she fell victim to the bogus USPS scam.
“I woke up this morning to a text from USPS saying my order was being held at a distribution center due to an incomplete address,” Fuslie recalled on X (formerly Twitter). “I clicked a link to update the address and it told me I needed to enter my card info to pay for the updated shipping so I did that. It didn’t work so I did it again with a different card. It failed again so I tried again with another different card.”
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The YouTuber said she only began to realize she had “just been scamazed” when she noticed that the website the text was bringing her to wasn’t a USPS website. She said she spent the next hour canceling all my cards so now I have no cards.” Fuslie said in a later post that while she does “not fall for these normally,” the suspicious text “WAS WELL TIMED ON THEIR PART!!! I had just ordered a bunch of new stuff for my move!!!!!” However, in hindsight, she admitted there were several red flags, including the fact that she “clicked on a site called ‘utowz’ and it said.. ‘lump sum: $0.3.’
In the social media age, scams are on the rise, with bogus USPS scams becoming so prevalent that USPS has an entire webpage dedicated to warning consumers about them. The so-called “smishing” scams are a form of phishing that involves a text message or phone number. According to USPS, “victims will typically receive a deceptive text message that is intended to lure the recipient into providing their personal or financial information. These scammers often attempt to disguise themselves as a government agency, bank, or other company to lend legitimacy to their claims.” The goal of the scams is to obtain personally identifiable information (PII) – account usernames and passwords, a Social Security number, date of birth, credit and debit card numbers, personal identification numbers (PINs), or other sensitive information – that can then be used “to carry out other crimes, such as financial fraud.”
The USPS warns consumers not to click on links if they did not sign up for a USPS tracking request for a specific package. Consumers can report suspicious messages.
As for Fuslie, she hilariously asked her followers, “AM I A BOOMER OH NOOOOOOOOO,” with one person suggesting, “think its time to rebrand from Uncle Fooze to Grandpa Fooze.”
