Scam Watch · Hanna’s guide to not getting ripped off
By Hanna Deen (The Price Mistake Queen)
A text landed on my phone last Tuesday while I was making the kids’ lunches: “USPS: Your package could not be delivered due to an incomplete address. Please update your information within 12 hours,” followed by a link.
Here’s the thing. I actually was expecting a package. I order enough that I am always expecting a package, and I’d bet you are too. That’s exactly what this scam counts on.
I deleted it without tapping, and by the end of this article you’ll be able to do the same in three seconds flat, without even a flutter of “but what if it’s real?”
The 3-second tell
You don’t need to study the message. Check these three things, in order, and stop at the first one that fails:
1. Who sent it? Real USPS tracking texts come from the short code 28777, and only if you signed up for tracking updates on a specific package. If a “USPS” text comes from a regular 10-digit phone number, or stranger still, from an email address, it’s fake. Done. Three seconds.
2. What does the link look like? Real postal links live at usps.com. Scam links dress up as USPS with a costume: usps-redelivery.top, usps.com-track.info, uspshelp.xyz. Read the address like a mailing address: what matters is the part right before the “.com” or “.top” or “.xyz”. If it isn’t exactly usps.com, it’s a stranger’s website wearing a USPS hat. Same trick with “Amazon” texts: amazon.com is real, amazon-delivery-support.shop is not.
3. What is it asking for? The Postal Service does not text you asking for money, a “redelivery fee,” your card number, or your Social Security number. Ever. A $0.30 fee to release your package is a scam with a small price tag on purpose. They don’t want your thirty cents, they want the card number you type in to pay it.
Honestly, tell number one settles most of them before you’ve finished your coffee.
Why you should never tap the link “just to see”
I hear this a lot: “I knew it was probably fake, I just tapped to check.” Please don’t. Here’s what can be waiting on the other side:
- A fake USPS or Amazon page that looks pixel-perfect and exists only to collect your name, address, card number, or login.
- A “small fee” payment form that gives your card to criminals.
- And at minimum, tapping tells the scammers this phone number is alive and curious, which moves you up their list for the next round.
The link is the trap. The text is just the cheese.
“But I really am expecting a package”
Of course you are. So am I, permanently. Here’s the rule that solves it forever, and it’s the one genuinely useful tool in this whole article:
Never check a package through a link that came to you. Always go in the front door.
That means: open the Amazon app or type amazon.com yourself and look at “Your Orders.” Every real delivery problem will be sitting right there. For the mail, type usps.com yourself, or use the free USPS Informed Delivery service, which shows you what’s actually heading to your mailbox. If nothing’s wrong in the front door, nothing’s wrong, no matter what the text said.
This one habit, “front door only,” defeats fake delivery texts, fake bank texts, fake toll-road texts, fake everything texts. The message can lie. Your own typed-in app can’t.
The cousins to watch for
Once you can spot the USPS version, you’ll recognize the whole family:
- “Amazon: We’re having trouble delivering your order.” Same trick, different uniform.
- “Unpaid toll” texts claiming you owe a few dollars from a recent trip, with a link to pay. Same trap.
- “Your bank has locked your account, click to verify.” Your bank will never ask you to fix your account through a text link.
- FedEx and UPS versions, naturally.
Different logos, same skeleton: a small urgent problem, a short deadline, a link. Small-problem-plus-link-plus-deadline is the scam handshake.
Do this right now
- If one of these texts is sitting in your phone, don’t tap it. Use “Report Junk” if your phone offers it, or forward the text to 7726 (that spells SPAM, and it works on most carriers), then delete it.
- Check any package you’re worried about through the front door: open the Amazon app or type usps.com yourself.
- Set the family rule: nobody in the house taps a delivery link from a text. Front door only. I’ve drilled this with my husband, my kids, and my mother when she stays with us, and it’s turned scary texts into a game of “spot the fake” at our dinner table.
The rule to remember
A real delivery problem will always be waiting for you inside the official app or website. A fake one only exists inside the text. Never tap. Always go in the front door.
Share this with someone: Everyone you know gets these texts. Forward this along with a one-line note: “check the sender, never tap, go to the app.” That sentence has saved more card numbers than any antivirus.
Hanna Deen is The Price Mistake Queen. She tracks a truly embarrassing number of packages every week, and she has never once needed a text link to do it.
I send the morning’s best find on WhatsApp, and our Facebook group of nearly 10,000 deal hunters posts finds all day.
Join on WhatsApp →Facebook Group →More in this series: all of Hanna’s Scam Watch warnings.
