The Delivery You Didn't Order: Breaking Down the 'Free Phone' Scam

You probably already know you need to worry about thieves stealing packages from your porch, but now you also need to be wary of criminals leaving packages there. This is the surprising first step in a scam you might not have heard of. You open your front door and -- surprise! There's a package that looks like it was delivered by FedEx or UPS. Your name is even on the label. Inside is a new phone. The only problem? You never ordered one. It looks like you've just received a free phone, but in all likelihood, you're about to get scammed. This is the first stage of a classic high-tech identity theft scheme, sort of a modern-day Trojan horse. It happened in New York earlier this year, and in Canada and England a few years ago. The "free phone" scam doesn't seem to happen very often -- it does involve a lot of effort on the scammer's part. But since it begins in the real world rather than with an email, it might be more unexpected than typical scams and therefore easier to fall for. Although it can happen in a few different ways, there is usually some combination of a seemingly free phone, a front porch and a very real criminal sometimes showing up at your door. We break down three ways this "free phone" scam works, offer tips to help you avoid being taken in by it and explain what steps to take if you are. The free phone scam has been carried out in three slightly different variations. A free phone arrives on your doorstep, and you figure it's your lucky day. You activate the phone and input your personal information. Then it locks, freezes up and goes dark. You are now a cautionary tale with a useless phone, and some scammer out there has your personal information. Sometimes the phone that appears on your porch is one you did order. So it sounds very plausible when you get a call and your "carrier" tells you, whoops, we sent you the wrong phone, and we'll send you a prepaid label so you can send it back to us. Don't worry, we'll send you a replacement phone. You're a good person, so you comply by mailing your phone or leaving it in a box on your doorstep for a "delivery person" to pick it up. You later learn that you've just given away your brand-new phone to a stranger. This has happened in states like California, and it's pretty nerve-racking. The criminal knocks on your door, posing as a representative of Medicare, and the pitch goes: "Hey, you're going to get this new phone, no strings attached. I just need to scan your insurance card into this phone. OK, great, thanks. Now, here's your insurance card, and I'm going to go to my car with your phone and call this information into my superiors. Then I'll come right back and give you your phone." Unfortunately, the "Medicare representative" goes back to their vehicle and zooms away. You have no new phone, and some stranger is speeding away with your health insurance information. Scams are increasingly getting more sophisticated, but it's common to think you will never fall for one. But scams are pretty much everywhere these days. If you don't want to be a victim of the "free phone" scam or other, more common schemes, you'll want to do the following. Ideally, if you get something in the mail that you're certain you didn't order, you would simply not touch it. But we all know that we will. What if it's a gift or something we ordered and forgot about? So, yeah, odds are the average person will open it. If it is something like a phone and something feels off, "don't engage with the contents," says Patrick Coughlin, CEO and a founder of Savi Security, a Los Angeles-based cybersecurity company. "Engaging means plugging it in, powering it on, scanning a QR code or inserting a SIM card," Coughlin says. "Any one of those can hand a scammer access to your accounts, your identity, or your phone number." He adds: "We've seen cheap phones preloaded with malware, SIM cards designed to route fraudulent activity through your name and QR codes that drop credential-stealing pages on your device the second you scan them. So leave it alone." Angelo Kevin Brown, an assistant professor of criminology at Arkansas State University, says that sometimes criminals "will send a new iPhone to a person's house and try to get the package before the person does." If they've done that, they may have purchased the item with your money, Brown adds. "So, if it is an expensive item, it is often important to check the credit accounts of those who live in the home to make sure nothing has been opened by them," Brown says. And you're doing nothing wrong by taking the package sent to you. "Legally, under federal regulation, such as with the FTC, if a package is sent to you by accident, you can keep it, discard it or throw it away," Brown says. (It's another story if something is delivered to your home by mistake, and it's addressed to another person. In that case, keeping it is considered mail theft.) When contacting your carrier, always look up their phone number directly on their

The Delivery You Didn't Order: Breaking Down the 'Free Phone' Scam

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