Beware. I am glad that I was informed by the news that these kinds of chats may be a new scam tactic, especially when someone we do not know well messages us for the first time. As you can see, this account hasn’t replied to anything, giving me the impression that this is indeed a scam tactic.
I literally got the same message a few days ago and immediately showed my wife. She laughed a little TO hard if you ask me, but whatever. Lol
Haha, sucker. I’m gonna message her and make her my new WIFE. /s
If they aren’t already in my contacts, they don’t get a reply.
Smart, because spammers log which numbers have responded and put them on a hot list. Those hot lists get traded around, which will greatly increase the amount of spam you receive.
Just block and report and never respond.
Why would anyone respond to this kind of contact from random people or someone you just know peripherally? Are people really that stupid?
If they send this to enough people, it’s extremely likely that they hit someone who has recently given their number to someone new. This message hits a lot differently if you are hoping for or expecting contact from a number you don’t know.
This message is actually really well crafted for targeting someone who is lonely and trying to put themselves out there.Scams are purposely crafted with levels of sophistication to target specific levels of tech literacy.
Not saying you did, but just for all reading, never assume you’re too tech savvy to get scammed. That thought is scammers literal bread and butter. Stay vigilant and curious.
it’s true that even smart people fall for well-crafted social engineering.
I consider myself technically apt.
I was expecting a parcel from abroad so was expecting to have to pay customs.
Received an SMS that looked fairly legit, from a named SMS number that didn’t set off an alarm bell, asking for additional information. The only red flag that got me were some unusually personal questions, like date of birth. I was close to giving away a bunch of personal details.Another one was a “your parking permit is about to expire”. We recently had permitted parking introduced, and I figured I’d messed something up. But thankfully I looked into that via the councils parking permit page, and knew I was months away from an expiry.
My parents received a “help, I’ve flushed my phone down the toilet and need a new one for work tomorrow. Sorry for the strange number, I’ve borrowed a friend’s phone. Can you send me $$$ to [account details] so I can get a new phone?” from a scammer pretending to be my sister.
Apparently they made it up to a “this is a new account number, are you sure this isn’t a scam?” prompt in their banking app when they finally decided to try and contact her. She immediately picked up and said “stop, it’s a scam”.It doesn’t take much to make you vulnerable to social engineering.
An expectation of events and something that would normally red flag suddenly doesn’t seem suspicious.
An emotional manipulation, time pressure, all that stuff, and it’s easy to ignore red flags.I always say “if you ever feel pressure, take a moment and analyse the situation”. Time pressure, emotional pressure. And analyse looking for anything that seems odd, then pick at that thread.
I have a relative that, while working as a police detective specializing in fraud, lost a lot of money in a Ponzi scheme. It was his belief that he would always be able to tell if something was a scam that sunk him. Definitely embarrassing, but it always reminds me that anyone can be scammed by the right offer.
This is by no means well crafted though, it’s honestly so low effort I’m surprised if it works at all.
You missed the point.
Just depends on how it hits. I got a random message like
“It was great seeing you Sally, we should catch up like that more often.”
My name isn’t Sally. But my mom’s is. And my mom is at an age where sometimes I get a TXT via email, if you get me. And she complains about her friend not understanding tech…And this friend was visiting from out of town for the first time in years, one who I had told mom to give my number too in case they needed assistance while visiting.
So I said “Hey, Maureen, this is Sue, you must have pressed the wrong button. I’m sure Mom agrees! How was the restaurant? I’ve been meaning to try it.”
Now… That was not smart. I gave actually checks and changes real name to Sue my real name, my mom’s and a well known restaurant name. If the scammer had have been smart, there’s a million things they could have done with that to trick me, either immediately or by waiting awhile and then acting.
But they were on their pig butchering script, so their next TXT was clunky, and was like “oh! No this is Ally, I must have gotten the wrong number! Silly me.”
And I was like. “Oh ok. No problem, glad you got to catch up with your friend then!”
And then like 2 hours later they txtd “is that restaurant in city? I’ve always wanted to visit.”
And I didn’t reply.
And the next was a hilarious cut and paste from the wiki of the city like “it has 1.9 million people and an economy of 59million annually! How cool!” Do you live there?"
By then I had figured it out.
But they do this all the time, there are alot of them, and it doesn’t take much luck for your guard to go down…
Dude her friend is shy, and has a crush on ME!! Clearly she wants to know me and is probably my dream girl but is afraid to make the first move. I’m going to make the first move so we can fall in love and live out our happy lives selling deep fried bananas at festivals across the world. Why shouldn’t I contact them??
Check out Social Catfish and you will immediately see that there are more than enough people out there to fall for this stuff. They have a YouTube channel and upload pretty frequently with new investigations. Hundreds of people thinking they are dating only fans models and actors. People will sometimes even ignore all the research that they are provided with and still insist that the person they are talking to is real. Loneliness (sometimes horniness) is a hell of a drug.
Yes. People are that stupid.
I remember seeing a news article about this one woman that sent thousands of dollars to some scammer that pretended to be Brad Pitt. They sent her some hilariously badly photoshopped photos of Brad Pitt in the hospital and she still didn’t catch on. Or she didn’t even bother to like Google if Brad Pitt was actually in the hospital. Scammers don’t want people that can spot a scam, they want people like that woman and boy there are plenty like her out there.
Loneliness. Sometimes people just want to talk to other people and they’ll take it in any form which opens them up to being vulnerable to scams.
Be a misanthrope. Suddenly, the situation becomes pretty clear.
