The UAE authorities warn all expats of the fake Salik message

The recipient is asked to pay their'vehicle trip cost' in the text message that comes from an unidentified number.

Residents of the UAE have been cautioned on many occasions by the authorities of the UAE that they may receive hoax text messages from senders impersonating government officials.

Residents have reported being targeted by yet another type of scam that involves them receiving a text message from an unidentified number in which they are asked to make a payment for their "vehicle trip fee."

The fake message that Khaleej Times managed to get its hands on displays the following message: "Salik: Your vehicle trip fee has not been paid, please deal with it as soon as possible to avoid fines." In addition to that, the communication contained a questionable link.

When trying to determine whether or not a communication contains fraudulent information, there are a few things that you should keep an eye out for. Some of the telltale signs of a bogus communication include the following:

Messages received from an unidentified number or sender do not reflect the appropriate authorisation.
The message has a grammatical error.
The message either includes a link to anything or it requests an instant answer.
In this particular instance, the false warning came from an unidentified overseas phone number. On the other hand, a typical Salik communication will include the authority's name in the ID, as seen in the following example.

An employee of Salik's customer support department has certified that communications that are identifying "Salik" as the sender but have not been received directly from the Salik domain are very certainly forgeries.

In addition, the agent instructed the recipient not to make any payments or click on any links that could have been contained in the text message. He went on to say that in order to protect oneself from falling victim to such cons, one could even download the Smart Salik app and make payments using that.