In August 2023, I received this text message from a number I don't recognize:

  Do you live in San Francisco and have a child age 7 or younger? Take a 10 minute survey to share your voice! The first 300 participants will get a $10 gift card! https://tinyurl.com/bdzxjsvu

The message didn't have any information about who it was from, or how they got my number.

Also, the link was to a URL shortener, which is often used for scams. I was curious, so I clicked anyway.

The link redirected to a form on another web site:

https://survey.communityvoicecommunitychoice.com/jfe/form/SV...

That website said it was an SF government department. But the web site domain did not end in sf.gov, which made me more suspicious.

I was curious about the questions, though, so kept clicking through.

But then just before the end or the survey, it wouldn't let me continue without entering my full name and email address.

I decided to alert someone at the department which allegedly hosted the survey. When I Googled the department name, the first result had the domain sfdec.org

Now, if SFDEC actually exists, then there's a good chance that sfdec.org, being the first link, is legit.

But I had never heard of that department before, so how could I know it was legit? It would take a bunch of time to look at .gov sites and see if they refer to sfdec.org

I emailed someone listed on the sfdec.org site, and they replied saying the survey was legit. But to this day I'm not sure whether the sfdec.org site is a legit government site.

It seems like it would be easy to create a fake department and fake web site.