Beware — new smishing attempt abounds

HENDERSON — Another day, another scam.

Sheriff Curtis Brame reached out to the Dispatch to tell of a toll payment scam. He got a text early Monday morning.

"Your vehicle has an unpaid invoice," it read. "To avoid a bill with excessive fees of $79.80, kindly settle your balance. Total amount due: $5.89."

An attached link lead Brame to "tollncbill.com," an imitation of the NC Quick Pass website — which proceeded to ask Brame for his social security number. That's when he knew it was a scam.

That's called "smishing" — a portmanteau of phishing and SMS.

The proper link to NCQP is ncquickpass.com , and the Department of Transportation never texts in regard to unpaid tolls. Also, social security numbers are not needed to pay tolls.

Those who get texts such as the aforementioned ought to file a complaint with the Internet Complaint Crime Center at ic3.gov .

Chris Culbertson was riding through his neighborhood when two menacing dogs began circling him. When he fell off his bike, five more dogs who escaped out of a hole in the fence came over to him. The attack lasted a full 23 minutes. When it was finally over, he had sustained more than 300 bite marks. Culbertson spent four days in the hospital before dying of septic shock caused by his wounds. Now, his sister wants the dogs' owners charged with murder.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President-elect Donald Trump said on Tuesday he has picked as his secretary of defense Pete Hegseth, a Fox News commentator and veteran who has expressed disdain for the so-called "woke" policies of Pentagon leaders including its top military officer. Hegseth, if confirmed by the U.S. Senate, could make good on Trump's campaign promises to rid the U.S. military of generals who he accuses of pursuing progressive policies on diversity in the ranks that conservatives have rallied against.

Elon Musk may be the richest person in the world, CEO of the most overvalued car company in the world and was rumored to functionally be Trump's co-President. Yet, despite all of his financial success, he's never been able to escape one simple truth: He is a deeply unlikable person. He can blame it on his reportedly self-diagnosed autism, but no one wants to be his friend including the Trump team, apparently, with some members telling the Daily Beast he's the "guest who wouldn't leave."

In his first Daily Show monologue in the aftermath of Donald Trump's presidential election win, Jon Stewart grappled with the question of why things went so poorly for Democrats. He showed a montage of clips of news pundits arguing that Democrats lost because they had gone "too woke." "I only have one problem with the 'woke' theory," Stewart replied. "I just didn't recall seeing any Democrats running on woke s-t." "These were the commercials I saw for the Democrats," Stewart said, showing a mon

What would you do if you'd just been dealt a devastating, extremely public defeat?If your answer is "drink wine in leggings," then vice-president and former Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Kamala Harris can do you one better: Drink wine in leggings, sporting a messy bun, while playing Connect 4."Back to where it all began only a few months ago," Harris's 40-year-old niece, Meena Harris, wrote in an Instagram post Sunday that depicted a smiling, laughing Harris sitting cross-legged on the

An eagled-eyed husband and wife were sailing in Hawaii when they spotted mysterious objects in the distance. Camila and Ryan Sullivan found five scuba divers drifting at sea. They told their rescuers that they were on a diving excursion. When they surfaced, they realized that they drifted away and their dive boat was nowhere to be found. The couple tried to pull them to safety but the sea was too rough. They radioed the U.S. Coast Guard. Twenty minutes later, help finally arrived.