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What's the deal with all those weird wrong-number texts?

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Re: What's the deal with all those weird wrong-number texts?

#31

Post by LegitShady »

Animats wrote: post #7

In this case, the victim deposited the money into a fake crypto platform that told him his investments were performing well, presumably to entice him to deposit even more. Of course, once he tried to withdraw the money, he found he was unable to. That sounds just like the "binary option" business which used to be run out of Israel. The Times of Israel blew that apart with "The Wolves of Tel Aviv" investigation series…

the binary options guys were obvious scams to everyone but their victims, but if someone cold calls you to sell investments and you give them money you'd probably fall for a bunch of different scams.

Re: What's the deal with all those weird wrong-number texts?

#32

Post by ElijahLynn »

Well researched for sure, good read as I had some of these recently too and am glad now to understand more about it.

What I do want to highlight is the deeper "why", and that is "why" are these people doing this? There must be a fundamental survival mechanism here, in a larger chain. These people may not have opportunities, the ones holding others captive. What kind of environment is needed to create this type of behavior? Surely we must address that at the core of it all. I think it comes down to basic resources, and this is where I think the vision of Jacque Fresco and The Venus Project can come into play. Which is to create a resource-based economy and evolve as a civilization to taking care of one another, it is a form of democratic socialism, which I think can solve this type of issue, and help us all be more integrated and happier.

Re: What's the deal with all those weird wrong-number texts?

#33

Post by rdtsc »

Apocryphon wrote: post #18
bee_rider wrote: post #8

Ah, about 20 years ago I think a relative responded to a, I think it was, an "I'm here at the airport, don't see you anywhere" kind of email. This was before spam filters got good, so that email address was basically kaput.

I often do respond to such messages pretending I am the person they're trying to reach. It confuses them and they stumble over their script.

That’s what I do when I am bored. I figure if I can keep engaged a bit longer they’ll have less time to scam others.

Re: What's the deal with all those weird wrong-number texts?

#34

Post by kube-system »

xmprt wrote: post #24
kube-system wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think I agree with that. I rarely get scams via USPS, never get explicit or potentially damaging content, the senders are all in my legal jurisdiction, and the spam arrives once per day in a manageable format. Almost all of the content is from businesses in my local area, businesses that I have previously shopped at, or political ads. Electronically from private companies I frequently get a larger volume of s…

> I'd take 10x the amount of spam in my mailbox if I could get rid of all of the rest of the garbage I'm bombarded with I for one would not. Digital spam is easy to deal with. There are automated filters, easy ways to block them, and the few that slip through are simple to deal with. Mailbox spam is physically painful to deal with and it's a massive waste of paper.

Email is the least of my problems. If you know of any good filters for SMS, phone calls, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Instagram, etc, I'd be very interested. I have to mute all of them because it is a constant stream of garbage from all of them.

Re: What's the deal with all those weird wrong-number texts?

#36

Post by ntoskrnl »

0des wrote: post #25
ntoskrnl wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, I could move to the woods and live off wild berries for the rest of my days. But if you want to be part of modern society, your bank will mail you your credit card, and your water company will text you a code to login and pay. Realistically, what choice do you have?

Do you not encounter Amish people where you live?

I wasn't offended and didn't downvote you. But the Amish do receive mail and use phones.

First article I found: https://amishamerica.com/do-amish-use-telephones/

Re: What's the deal with all those weird wrong-number texts?

#39

Post by eropple »

idiotsecant wrote: post #4
johnklos wrote: post #2

Simple: it's time to stop using phone numbers. I use Apple's Messages. If someone spams me, I report them. They're blocked and have to go through the extra work of setting up a new account to try again. Compare this with, say, Google. Gmail lets spammers / scammers have limitless accounts and they don't do shit when an account is reported for spam. You can block and report Gmail spammers all day long and you'll get n…

I don't want one company to be the arbiter of all communications everywhere. Phone numbers work fine.

Phone numbers have the same problem as email, though: because "everyone" is responsible, no one is responsible. The deluge of spam texts and calls to my public phone number is genuinely unpleasant and frustrating to deal with as, like, a person living in the world.

I practically don't use email anymore for those reasons, and a phone number hangs around only because right now I can't not have one for legal-type reasons.

Re: What's the deal with all those weird wrong-number texts?

#40

Post by shostack »

avalys wrote: post #29

Wow, how interesting. I started getting these a few months ago, right after starting a new job in a somewhat high-profile area. I have been getting 1-2 per month but found them quite unusual because none of them ever progressed to an actual scam - just a few messages back and forth about the fabricated "wrong number" situation and then each thread would stop, seemingly earnestly. Since there was no obvious scam, I've…

If there's back and forth interaction I wonder if it is to aid improving their "legitimacy footprint" from metadata or something to avoid spam blockers.
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