LOUISVILLE, Ky. — It can happen to anyone within a matter of seconds.
A text message attempting to impersonate RiverLink, the toll service provider for the three bridges between Louisville and southern Indiana, has been appearing on phones of those who use the service.
"It kind of flagged as though oh no, this isn't right," Lex Achter said.
Achter was sitting on her couch Wednesday afternoon when she received the text message.
"It says, 'Your recent journey on the Kentucky Toll Roads has resulted in a charge of $3.75’," she explained.
Atcher knew something was off since she had not crossed the toll bridge.
"My first thought was to ask my partner, ‘Hey, are we covered on our transponders? Do we need to re-up? Is our card bad or something? Do we need to ante-up?’ He assured me [that] we're good and [the] transponder is working, and we still have a balance," Atcher said.
After taking a closer look she noticed a few things were misleading.
The message referred to "Kentucky Toll Roads" and the link was listed as "RiverLinks.net," so Achter did even more digging by putting the link in a Google safe web inquiry.
"To see what it brought up information-wise without visiting and it showed me a Google website that was built like 24 hours ago," she said.
Marsha Downey received the same message. She uses the toll bridge to commute to Indiana for work.
"I hadn't been in the office, and I hadn't crossed the toll bridge, and I looked, and it said “RiverLinks” and that was a flag," Downey said.
She called RiverLink without any hesitation.
"I was like I got this text, and the lady immediately knew she said we've gotten about 100 calls today she said it's definitely a scam," Downey said.
In a statement RiverLink said, "...The text message is not from RiverLink and recipients are warned not to click the link that asks for personal information RiverLink does not share toll charge notifications via text message..."
"It still scares me a little bit because I do have my checking account connected to RiverLink," Downey said.
Downey and Achter hopes no one fall victim to the scam.
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