Kingston Police and the City of Kingston issue warning regarding parking ticket smishing scam

Release Date: March 27, 2024

Suspicious text messages asking community members to immediately pay parking tickets have been reported to the City of Kingston and Kingston Police. Parking tickets cannot be paid via text message. Be aware of suspicious looking text messages and don’t click links in them or provide personal information such as passwords.

A sample of the text message can be seen below:

These types of text messages are called smishing. They are a type of phishing, which is an attempt to trick people into revealing sensitive data such as personal information, banking details, credit card numbers and passwords. Scammers using phishing techniques like smishing hope you will trust the link, follow up and then provide them with data they can use.

If you would like to learn more or want to report an instance of fraud visit the Kingston Police website.