Law enforcement in Georgia is alerting the public to a wave of deceptive text messages and emails impersonating Verizon, warning residents not to click suspicious links that claim to offer account credits. The scam alerts follow last week's widespread Verizon service disruption.
The Jones County Sheriff's Office cautioned that scammers are exploiting the recent outage to target vulnerable customers by posing as representatives of the telecommunications giant.
"Do NOT click the link," the sheriff's office said. "This is a scam designed to steal your personal info, account details, or infect your device with malware," it said.
1.5 Million Customers Affected
The warning comes after Verizon suffered a massive network failure that crippled service for approximately 1.5 million customers. The outage began around noon on Jan. 14 and lasted nearly a full day, with Downdetector, a service disruption-tracking website, recording more than 178,000 concurrent outage reports at peak impact.The telecommunications provider said customers would receive notifications via text message when credits became available, with business customers to be contacted separately.
However, as per the Jones County Sheriff's Office, scammers have seized on the legitimate payments to orchestrate their fraudulent schemes.
Public Safety Implications
The nationwide outage posed public safety concerns, particularly for emergency communications. New York City Emergency Management issued guidance directing residents to use alternative methods for reaching emergency services, such as FNDY emergency boxes and LinkNYC kiosks.Verizon confirmed the outage's resolution in the evening of Jan. 14, instructing customers to restart devices if connectivity issues persisted. The incident marked the company's first major network failure since 2024, when service disruptions affected over 100,000 customers. Competing carriers AT&T and T-Mobile confirmed they experienced no service interruptions during the incident.