Made a road trip to a vendor with my manager yesterday, he asked me if I had gotten any toll evasion texts. I said no, I just get the "Thanks for your $500 for McAfee, CLICK HERE if you need to change anything" emails but I had seen this thread recently.
Ooh, I got one!
Except, Ohio uses EZ Pass and not a plate reader. And Ohio EZ Pass doesn't have my phone number.
We have started to get these scam texts here. The nearest toll road is like 300 miles away!
I've been getting the fake PayPal invoices to my gmail. Those are fun, since i refuse to link any of my accounts to PayPal.
Massachusetts DOT posted a notice on their website about the scam:
MassDOT Alerts Customers of Smishing Scam
The Massachusetts Department of Transportation was alerted that a text message-based scam, also known as smishing, is fraudulently claiming to represent tolling agencies from across the country. The scammers are claiming to represent the tolling agency and requesting payment for unpaid tolls.
The targeted phone numbers seem to be chosen at random and are not uniquely associated with an account or usage of toll roads.
I’ve had to set my phone to only ring when trusted numbers call me. The latest scam for the past few months: debt consolidation.
Since jan, robocalls have shot up by the ten fold for me. For a while they decreased a lot.
In reply to aw614 :
They’re like nonstop for me. The dollar figure offered for the loan consolidation keeps going up. I think we’re at like $84k.
David S. Wallens said:I’ve had to set my phone to only ring when trusted numbers call me. The latest scam for the past few months: debt consolidation.
We have had a problem with that system- where a legit call gets blocked- which was a customer service number for a large company. But it lets through most of the scams and even labels them as spam.
After I read this thread last week, i got two of these texts. I'm in Michigan. No toll road for miles. It's definitely getting shot cannoned out en masse.
David S. Wallens said:In reply to aw614 :
They’re like nonstop for me. The dollar figure offered for the loan consolidation keeps going up. I think we’re at like $84k.
They want you to have 42 Challenge cars
xflowgolf (Forum Supporter) said:After I read this thread last week, i got two of these texts. I'm in Michigan. No toll road for miles. It's definitely getting shot cannoned out en masse.
I just had lunch with my brother yesterday. he lives in Detroit and has been getting a lot of them.
SV reX said:The legal ones are pretty much a scam too.
There is one near me that is a known trap. It's a camera for a school zone. It's installed on a blind corner at the bottom of a hill. If you coast down the hill without touching the brakes or the gas, it will catch you.
There were 35,000 school zone violations issued in my city last year. 30,000 of them were issued by the one camera. $75 per violation. That's $2,250,000 revenue generated from one camera. It's run by a private entity (NOT the city).
The part that bugs me is that it is issuing a moving violation without any knowledge of who is driving the car. It is sent to the registered owner. I loaned my car to someone recently and I got the ticket. Same thing happened to my son.
Im sure these cameras will soon be used for other things (like texting while driving, expired registration, or seatbelt violations)
Not cool.
For all the crap NJ gets, this is one thing they did right. Red light and speed cameras are illegal here.
Idaho has exactly 0 (zero, zip, zilch, nada) toll roads within its borders. The parts of Utah and Nevada I drive are also toll-free. Near as I can tell, the closest legitimate toll road is about 530 miles away.
But I have a delinquent toll that needs paid. Right....
I wish we could have red light cameras here in Ohio; the red light running has reached epidemic proportions.
In reply to dculberson :
We HAD them, and after a few lawsuits and other actions, they were removed.
I got one!
Pete. (l33t FS) said:In reply to dculberson :
We HAD them, and after a few lawsuits and other actions, they were removed.
We had them in SC for about 5 minutes. SC determined that traffic violations could not be cited based on photographic evidence alone. An officer had to witness the offense. This was due to municipalities using them for revenue collection. IE they would put in a camera and turn the yellow light time down so more people would run it.
In reply to Toyman! :
That's pretty much how it's gone everywhere. Lots of municipalities have hired companies such as RedFlex to administer them as well, which then created an incentive for a private contractor -- who takes a hefty percentage of each citation -- to do shady things like issue invalid citations and alter yellow-light timing. They're not about safety, they're about putting hands into pockets.
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