The wireless carrier said that it was working with the F.B.I. and the Secret Service to investigate a recent wave of fraudulent messages, but said the source did not appear to be Russian hackers.
The wireless carrier Verizon blamed "bad actors" on Wednesday for thousands of spam text messages recently received by its customers and said it was working with federal law enforcement agencies to try to identify the source.
The telecom giant confirmed in a statement on Wednesday that its customers had been targeted by the rogue texts offering them a free gift, which were reported on Monday by The Verge, a technology news website. Some users had reported being forwarded to Russian state media sites when they clicked on links in the texts, but Verizon was treating the texts as a more typical phishing scheme aimed at defrauding consumers.