I renewed the registration for one of our cars yesterday, and today got a fairly credible text message from 833-608-1722, claiming to be the California DMV (“CaDMV”) and that I must update my contact information. The text directed me to a website, which redirects to realidcalifornia.com — again an imperfect but surprisingly credible phishing site.
I’m posting this here in the hopes of warning people who get similar text messages that this is a complete scam. But since I’d just engaged with the DMV’s website only 24 hours earlier, it felt far more authentic than it otherwise would have.
If anyone can shed light on the mechanism for connecting that website visit to my phone number, I’d love to hear it. Malicious cookie or other malware on the DMV website that they don’t know about? Something else?