Zoë Schiffer: So, switching gears, our next story is about another unavoidable fact of current life: fraudulent text messages. Brian, how many scam texts or calls do you currently receive in a given week?
Brian Barrett: I mean, how much did I get paid during this recording? It’s constant, not even counting the political ones, which are legal but annoying. No, they’re indefinite, Zoë. This is the most consistent communication I have ever had from scammers.
Zoë Schiffer: Yes, same thing. So we don’t know for sure, but along with millions of other Americans, you may have been targeted by a Chinese fraud network called Lighthouse. Over the past few years, the group has sent millions of fraudulent text messages, often impersonating the USPS or toll collector, and has reportedly made over a billion dollars from its schemes. Our colleague Matt Burgess has learned that Google filed a lawsuit in the United States this week, suing 25 anonymous individuals who allegedly operated as part of this fraud network. The Lighthouse group is named after the software it sells that helps fraudsters defraud people. It is developed by cyber criminals and sold, which really blew my mind, as a subscription service for scammers with less technical skills. You can purchase a weekly, monthly, seasonal, annual or ongoing subscription. They run a professional operation there.
Brian Barrett: Just remember to turn off auto-renewal if you don’t want to – you don’t want to be hit with a bill after your free trial.
Zoë Schiffer: Yes, you really need to make sure you have a good return on your investment before committing to a project.
Brian Barrett: Yes. This is unusual, we have also seen this in ransomware, e.g. Now you have fraud as a service. The level of professionalism of these operations shouldn’t surprise me, but it always does. Google’s filing shows that Lighthouse offers over 600 phishing templates that scammers can operate to steal personal information. You can choose from over 400 entities or organizations that you can impersonate. This is really specific, really sophisticated, and I think what also interests me here, Zoë, is that these lawsuits always seem to be futile.