Book a session or call us - we'll handle the rest.
Early voting in Travis County opened this morning, Monday October 19, and four days earlier the FBI warned that scammers are texting voters a claim that they are "not registered" with a link to a fake state registration page, so here is how to tell the real check from the trap and what to do if you already tapped.
Texas has spent six weeks in the news for voter-registration backlogs, and a text that says "there is a problem with your registration" does not sound far-fetched this month. It is designed not to. Here is what the FBI said, why Austin is a soft target right now, the one legitimate way to check your status, and a ten-minute phone checklist for you and the relatives who ask you for tech help.
The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center published alert I-101526-3-PSA on October 15. Four schemes are in it:
The FBI's advice is short: do not give personal information to anyone who contacted you first, do not tap links in unsolicited messages, check your registration through vote.gov or your state and county election office, check a committee on FEC.gov before you give, and report what you receive at ic3.gov.
A scam works best when it matches something you already half-expect, and Austin voters have had two real reasons to worry about their registration:
Put those stories next to a text that reads "Action required: your Travis County voter record could not be verified before early voting" and you can see why people tap. The scammer needed nothing about you, only the news cycle.
There is one official status check, and it is not a link in a text.
Two more things the county has said this month: a record marked "suspense" means the office needs updated address information, and you can still vote with an extra form at the polling place. And Texas does not notify voters of a registration problem by text message. The county mails a registration certificate, so a text about your status is a counterfeit by definition.
Worth doing today, and again on a parent's or grandparent's phone the next time you are in the same room.
On an iPhone: Settings > Apps > Messages > Unknown & Spam, and turn on Filter Unknown Senders. Links from numbers not in your contacts stop being tappable until you choose to trust the sender. On Android, open Google Messages, tap your profile picture, then Messages settings > Spam protection, and make sure it is on. Google announced on October 14 that Messages is adding an on-device check for slow-burn scam conversations; take it when your phone offers it.
Because the filters above disable links from strangers, this year's scam texts tell you to reply Y and reopen the thread so the link turns blue. That reply is the whole exploit. A real agency did not text you a link in the first place.
A fake page can copy the state seal and the layout. The address bar is harder to fake: the real sites end in .gov (VoteTexas.gov, votetravis.gov, vote.gov). Anything with "texas" or "travis" in front of a .com, .org, .xyz or .info is not the county. A registration lookup never charges a fee, so a page that asks for a card has told you what it is.
Donation links in texts are the second scheme in the FBI alert. If you want to give, type the campaign's website into the browser and look the committee up on FEC.gov first. A committee you cannot find is not a committee.
A call from "the county clerk's office" or a candidate's recorded voice asking you to confirm your registration, pay a fee or read back a code is a scam every time. Hang up, then call the published number if you are unsure.
All of it is on votetravis.gov. A message with a different date is wrong, not the county.
Most of this is a settings menu and a conversation. It stops being that when a phone is already showing the signs of a bad tap: a new profile it did not have before, a browser that opens on its own, a run of two-factor codes nobody requested. That is a cleanup job, and the sooner it is done the less there is to undo. Our scam protection and account cleanup visits cover the freeze, the password reset and the device check in one sitting, and a device troubleshooting visit handles the phone that is misbehaving. For the relative who wants to understand the tell rather than be told, tech tutoring at the kitchen table beats a lecture from across town.
Check your registration the right way, and book a visit if a device in the house needs a second set of eyes before November 3.
