Beware the 'Hi, how are you?' text. It's a scam - here's how it works

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ZDNET's key takeaways

• Online investment scams in the US cost victims $3.5 billion.
• The median loss for the first half of 2025 reached $10,000.
• Protect yourself from these scams by knowing the warning signs.

Have you ever received a friendly "Hi, how are you?" greeting through a text or social media post from a person you don't know? That could be someone making an innocent mistake, or it could be a cybercriminal looking to run an investment scam on you.

Investment scams are now the fifth most common type of fraud in the US, with more than 66,700 reports during the first half of 2025, according to broker comparison site Broker Chooser. Over that period, unsuspecting victims lost a total of $3.5 billion to such fraud. Scammers earned ...