Scam USPS texts falsely linked to human trafficking in viral posts

• Misinformation on social media convinced many users that a text scam claiming to be from the United States Postal Service (USPS) was related to human trafficking.
• Polaris, the agency that operates the National Human Trafficking Hotline, said that there is no evidence linking the phishing scam to human trafficking.
• The Federal Trade Commission and Better Business Bureau also reported that the texts were part of a phishing scheme to gather personal information.
• Polaris said that misinformation about sex trafficking does "more harm than good."

As a massive phishing text scam went viral — purporting to be from the United States Postal Service (USPS) — some people on social media falsely claimed it was linked to human sex trafficking.

But the text messages have nothing to do with human sex trafficking, according to Polaris, the non-governmental agency that operates the US National Human Trafficking Hotline.

Americans were warned about the phishing scheme by the FTC and Better Business Bureau

The Better Business Bureau and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) have also warned Americans about the phishing scheme.

Victims of the scam receive a text message notifying them to click on a link related to a package. The link leads recipients to fill out a customer satisfaction survey which asks for a credit card number, the FTC said. The domain name of the current iteration of this scam is based outside the US, according to the fraud prevention site Scam Detector.

Phishing scams are fraudulent schemes meant to gather personal information by sending messages that seem legitimate through private channels like email or text. They often involve collecting credit card numbers and using links that include malware to infect the recipient's device.

There is no proof that the scam is linked to human trafficking

At press time, Insider could not identify the original source of the theory, but Polaris said in an August 27 statement that the agency had received several reports about the text scam.

The agency confirmed that "none of this information came from anyone who claimed to have actual knowledge of this scheme, or to be concerned about a particular missing person."

Instagram user @gialure, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment, posted about the scam on September 1. The post, which has more than 68,000 likes and 3,700 comments as of Monday morning, claimed that this phishing scam is a "sex trafficking method," and that opening the link in the text message allows the sender to track your location.

In the two weeks since that Instagram post, several Facebook and Instagram users have continued to post screenshots of the USPS phishing texts and repeated the false claim that they're part of a sex trafficking scheme.

Misinformation about sex trafficking does 'more harm than good'

In its statement debunking the conspiracy theory, Polaris said that misinformation about sex trafficking does "more harm than good," and included resources for how people can better identify real issues related to sex trafficking.

"Handling a surge of concern over viral social media posts makes it far more difficult for the Trafficking Hotline to handle other reports in a timely manner and might result in wait times for people who have a limited window of opportunity to reach out safely," the agency said.

The theory echoes the debunked Wayfair conspiracy theory, which spread to seemingly every corner of the internet in July, falsely alleging that the furniture retailer Wayfair was selling human children under the guise of furniture and decor on their website.

The Wayfair theory became so widespread that Polaris said the deluge of calls about Wayfair clogged up the National Human Trafficking Hotline and made the agency's work more difficult.

Despite its spread within mainstream Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram communities, the theory originated with a follower of the QAnon conspiracy theory.

QAnon is centered on the notion that an evil cabal of elite figures secretly control the government, the media, and other sectors of the country, and President Trump is working to defeat this cabal. Originally based on the 2016 Pizzagate conspiracy theory, QAnon devotees believe that this so-called cabal is involved with child sex trafficking.

As QAnon becomes increasingly mainstream, unfounded fears of sex trafficking are spreading like wildfire on social media.

QAnon followers have spread numerous false theories and some have been the subject of criminal allegations, including two killings and an attempted kidnapping.

• Read more:
• How the Wayfair human-trafficking conspiracy theory grew out of QAnon
• Wayfair conspiracy theorists are overwhelming the National Human Trafficking Hotline
• The CDC has faced an onslaught of calls about a COVID-19 conspiracy theory linked to QAnon
• QAnon conspiracy theorists have been linked to a killing and multiple armed stand-offs. Here are the criminal allegations connected to the movement and its followers.