Cobb County elections office warns residents of fake absentee ballot texts

The Cobb County Elections Department put a warning out to voters on Wednesday about text messages concerning applications for absentee ballots.

According to elections officials, multiple voters in Cobb County told the department they’d received text messages urging them to apply for absentee ballots, and that the message had appeared to come from a Cobb Elections phone number.

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The messages pointed the recipients to the Georgia Secretary of State’s absentee ballot request page, elections officials said.

While the link was real, the county said the messages themselves were not from the Cobb Elections Department and that the phone number was a spoof.

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“Cobb County Elections currently does not send out unsolicited voting information via text messages,” the department said in their announcement.

As a result, the incident was reported to the state and it is now under investigation by Cobb Information Technology Services and others.

To help Cobb voters, the county provided the following recommendations for online safety:

• Do not click on links in emails or texts unless you know the sender’s identity.
• Spoof websites can look identical to the real ones. Always verify by typing the URL directly into your browser.
• Read more about spoofing, scams, and other cyber security here: https://www.cobbcounty.org/police/news/technology-scamsinformation
• Stay vigilant and protect personal information

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