BARTON COUNTY -Post office staff in Great Bend are warning residents of an internet scam that is making its way through the area and the rest of the country.

Emails are being sent that state they are from the United States Postal Service (USPS), telling customers their shipment could not be completed because no one was at their address.

The scam has a link in the email to click to view the notice and says if a new delivery is not arranged within 24 hours, the shipment will be cancelled and the package returned to the sender, according to Brent Mooney, Postmaster in Great Bend

The USPS has recently added email notifications which might be the reason for the start of these scams.

Mooney warns citizens not to click on any links or attachments.

Out of all the phone calls Mooney and the Great Bend office has received, none of the potential scam victims were expecting a package.

Mooney says another red flag to look for is the tracking numbers. The USPS typically has large tracking numbers for packages that use 20-plus numbers. The email scam has been using much smaller tracking numbers.

One observed email scam had a subject of “Shipment status change notification for parcel #34461600” and showed it was sent from “[email protected].”