5 hours ago
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You use parking apps a lot – you have several on your phone – but it is not always straightforward. Sometimes there is a lack of reliable mobile signal, or the app crashes or behaves oddly, or it does not seem to want to accept your bank card.
Also, it is sometimes hard to keep track of which apps you have used when. So when you receive a text from RingGo saying you owe it money, you are not totally surprised.
“A routine review of open parking charges has identified an amount that is still due,” it says. “To reduce the risk of further financial charges and any administrative action within our parking services, please arrange settlement promptly.”
A link is provided for you to pay the outstanding charge.
However, the message is a scam – one of a number that are circulating at the moment, and not only targeting RingGo customers.
Criminals hope that by using threats of enforcement or legal action, people will panic and click the link, resulting in them losing money and their financial details to fraudsters.
Graham Conway, the managing director of the leasing company Select Car Leasing, says clicking on the link takes you to a site that is a close copy of the real RingGo website. Advances in AI have allowed scammers to create convincing clones of existing sites.
“The link is key because it sends you to a counterfeit page that almost mirrors the real RingGo site. If you then put in your username, password or card details, it goes directly to the criminal gangs, who can drain accounts or sell on your personal information,” Conway says.
What it looks like
At least two text messages are circulating and have almost identical language.
One warns that a “billing review” has found a parking charge is owed. Another says that a “routine review” has identified an amount that is outstanding.
The recipient is then asked to visit the site, put in their vehicle registration number and view the specifics of the charge. The link starts with the word “ringgo” but then has a series of unassociated words.
In order to activate the link, the user is asked to respond “Y” to the text. If the link does not work, they are asked to copy and paste it into a browser.
What to do
There are a number of red flags that mark this out as a scam. In some of the examples seen by the Guardian, the text is signed off as “RingGo Customer Servicess”. Poor spelling is a frequent sign of a fake. As is the web address, which bears no relation to the real RingGo site.
And the fact that the link may not work is another flag.
Serpil Hall, a security expert from Datos Insights, says this is specifically for iPhone users, as Apple’s iMessage service disables links in messages from unknown senders.
“The moment someone replies, even with a single letter, iMessage reclassifies the sender as known, and the link becomes active. The scammers are not guessing at this – they know the mechanics and are engineering around it deliberately,” she says.
“The choice of RingGo as the brand to impersonate is not random either. Parking payment services are a well-worn target because the notification is plausible to almost any driver, the amounts involved are small enough not to trigger immediate scepticism, and there is a genuine sense of consequence attached to ignoring it.”
The country code on the texts seen by the Guardian is Morocco, although Hall says the criminals are almost certainly not based there: they will typically try to find low-cost ways to route messages and make them harder to trace.
Also, both messages had a “report spam” button at the bottom, meaning Apple has already flagged them for possible fraud.
A spokesperson for RingGo says anyone who receives one of the messages should not – under any circumstance – click on the link, and should delete them.
Customers can verify their parking history on the RingGo app or by logging on to the website.
If you receive one of the texts, you can report it to the National Cyber Security Centre by sending it to 7726.
If you have clicked on a link of this sort and inputted some of your financial details online, immediately contact your bank and report it. Also change your passwords, starting with your banking ones.
