Austin's well-meaning motorists got taken for a ride by a bogus website pretending to be the city's official Park ATX app. City officials and residents are raising the alarm after the fake site, which pops up as a sponsored search result, bilked unsuspecting drivers by failing to provide paid-for parking services. According to KVUE, the phony page even snatched up the genuine app's logo to appear bona fide.
You might spot a fraudulent page appearing under the domain am5.com, which was highlighted by Jacob Culberson, the City of Austin's acting parking enterprise manager. He warned, "They had entered in some information trying to pay for their parking session and their parking session wouldn't start." Meanwhile, locals like Cameron Holmes acknowledged the threat of the deception, especially for those unfamiliar with the official app. "The only way I would know it's different is just because I already know how the actual app is set up, and it's kind of different from that. But especially if you're traveling or a tourist, I could definitely see you getting scammed, for sure," Holmes told KVUE.
Another driver, Paul Violand sounded off on the menace of such scams, "It makes me very nervous, with all the scams out there and yeah, you have to be very careful," Violand said. In response to the fraudulent activity, the city has reported the matter to Google's Ad Services and urged everyone who may have used the site to contact their credit card companies post-haste to safeguard against fraud.
For a surefire way to the real deal, city staff recommend downloading the Park ATX smartphone app directly from the App Store and Google Play, rather than risking a web browser search that could lead to these traps. Despite the city's swift action, the ruse website was still active as of Friday morning when searched, KXAN reports. The city has gone to lengths to inform its Park ATX vendor, Passport, about the incident and ensure users can distinguish between illegitimate and authentic services.
