The one about the package that's waiting for you

USPS: Your package is on hold due to an incomplete address. Please update your details within 24 hours or your parcel will be returned. [link]

Or the same thing with a fee attached — 30 cents, a dollar, £1.99. Always small.

The small amount is the point. Nobody agonises over thirty-five cents. That's the whole trick: the fee is too trivial to be worth checking, so you type your card number into a form you'd never have filled in for fifty dollars. Then the charge that follows isn't thirty-five cents.

The other half of the trick is timing. Almost everybody is waiting for a parcel. Send a million of these and you don't need to guess — a good share of the people who get it genuinely do have something in transit, and the message arrives feeling like an answer.

The three tells

1. Real carriers don't collect fees by text. The postal service doesn't text you for money. Neither does UPS, FedEx or Amazon.
2. Look at the actual address of the link, not the words. usps-redelivery.info, ups-parcel-fee.top, amzn-delivery.help — none of those are the company. The real ones are usps.com, ups.com, amazon.com, and nothing else.
3. A deadline in hours. “Within 24 hours.” “Or it will be returned.” Genuine logistics messages are not that dramatic.

What to do

1. Don't tap the link. Not to look. The page is the trap.
2. If you're genuinely expecting something, check the tracking number in the carrier's own app, or by typing their address into your browser yourself.
3. Delete it, and tell whoever else in your family gets a lot of parcels.