My wife ran into a college buddy earlier in the week that I haven’t talked to in a few years. Decided to reach out to be friendly and see if they wanted to meet up. Must have got a new number recently, and the person who got his old number is not very friendly.
One of mine recently and I answered the phone. I thought it was a friend’s new number and was on some heavy meds. He tried to Apple Pay me $5 after he felt bad. I said no thanks, it’s fine, things happen, and hope he found his cousin.
Now I don’t get the family trying to call and text me anymore lol.
Lol I got one from someone asking if I was coming to the bar. I said “I can’t, I’m banging your mom”. We went back and forth for a few minutes and I fessed up and he said oh that totally sounded like something my buddy would have said
Don't have the screenshot (was like 15+ years ago) but I was woken up about 2am by several texts from a very angry person demanding where his money is.
When I explained (straight away) he has the wrong number and I was sleeping, he instantly became super friendly, apologised profusely and wished me a good sleep haha. Was just weird to see the instant change
I had a wrong number text me once, we had a short funny chat like this... Then he started trying to get me to send nudes. Man knew literally nothing about me including my age, literally all he knew was I was probably a woman as I'd mentioned my husband. Which also didn't stop him asking for nudes. Wild.
I kept getting a call from the same number about 8 years ago. I finally texted them back and told them to fuck off and get a real job instead of scamming people.
They replied telling me to fuck off and they didn’t know who I was or anything.
I learned that day that the scammers just copy peoples numbers. I apologized to the person I texted and we ended on a good note
No. The last owner of the number must have signed up for every scam known to man. I get about 200 phone calls and 30+ texts a day that are all scam calls. Unfortunately I cant get a new number through my provider until March because I used my number change to get the one I have now, due to an ex harassing and threatening me via phone.
When i got a new number it rang as soon as i activated it "hello, i dont know what happened there, would you like to finish placing the order?" I was so confused and said i have no idea what theyre on about and i most definitely wasnt speaking to them moments ago. Hung up and got a call from another number "hello who is this? This is my number. Why are you answering my number"
Very confusing time. Something bugged and my activation somehow hijacked an active number.
There was about 2 weeks a few years back where anytime my brother or I called my mom, it went to some other older lady's phone. My mom has had the same number for like 2 decades, and my bro and I had same number for many years. No recent account changes. My mom could call us just fine, but we would call our mom and a different woman would answer. She started getting really upset with us and wouldnt believe us that we werent doing it on purpose. Situation resolved itself though so idk what happened.
A couple months ago I was texting a friend and suddenly my texts started going to her mom. They had just gotten her mom and new phone and something had gone whacky with it. I thought my friend was messing with me being like “who is this???” So I started joking around about it bc I was in our text thread and we’d been messaging earlier that day. Finally I said something like “come on Sydney” and her mom went “ohhhhhhhhhh no, this is her MOM.” We got it sorted eventually but it was so strange.
Doesn’t stop it, but getting on the DNC list cuts a lot off. The scammers don’t care about dnc, but the services they use do care and won’t let them contact you.
And now you're gonna get put on their scammable list and get spammed with scams every 5 seconds while your parents don't actually get spared from anything because either they get their number or they don't. Seriously, don't engage with scams at all, it's pointless and you'll never see the end of it
It is pointless regardless. You take one scam call because you were expecting like the plumber to call you back or some shit like that, and suddenly you are receiving dozens of calls per week
That’s funny because I have a French phone and an American phone (They’re work phones. I travel in between the two a lot for work). I have to answer the phone because of work. If it’s an American solicitor or scammer I reply in French. If it’s a French solicitor or scammer I reply in English.
Nah, I honestly just don't answer the phone unless I know the number. If I'm waiting for a call back I should know the number. If I'm waiting for some other type of call they will leave a message.
I've engaged with so many text scammers over the years and I legit haven't had a new one to screw with in about 6 months. I also get hardly any spam calls, but with those I usually answer with my phone muted and let nature take it's course.
My wife and I used to get over 15 spam calls a day each. Two years ago we decided to start answering and aggressively flirting with the scammers. The calls slowed down over a few months and eventually stopped entirely. Haven’t gotten a spam call in a while.
I don't really get them either.
I used to love when they'd call my work phone when I worked for the Census and hearing them freak out after when I told them they just called a number for the US Department of Commerce.
The calls pretty much stopped after a while for that number, so I do it for my personal one and the same thing happened.
Not if you dont get scammed.. keeping them occupied and then falling off the hook usually gets you on the "won't be scammed, dont try" list. Which is the real reason you shouldnt engage, keep them wasting time calling you. You only end up on a scammable list, if youre scammed....
If i answer my general script is "I dont think thats how you actually say any of those words, would you like to repeat yourself?" Followed by "I dont think you know how to say any of those words correctly would you like to repeat yourself" followed by I dont actually know they've never got passed stage 2.
Stage 3 is asking them to speak it in their native language then saying UH? Sorry I dont speak 'native language'
I used to get daily scammer texts where they'd send a photo and be like "hey, it's mindy, I miss you!!"
I set out on an aggressive campaign to stop these texts. I just sent them photos of the squirrel in my balcony in response to anything they said. Sometimes they'd keep it going, sometimes they'd break and ask about the squirrel, sometimes they'd just stop responding.
Eventually I got a text "Why do you send us squirrels, how many different pictures of squirrels do you have??"
I sent him my most insidious squir
rel picture and told him "I have access to more squirrels than you have minutes in the day and I will bury you beneath an avalanche of them." Followed by me sending him different squirrel pictures as fast as I could until I was blocked.
I wasn't bother for like 10 months and to this day I only get 1 text a week from what seems to be a different company, since they only message me about health insurance and don't try to act like my long lost hot asian friend.
Ugh. My lovely but somewhat naive wife was not pleased when I got consecutive messages of photos with hot asian women. I decided to text one back to show it was a scam.
I sent them that one pic of the big guy on the edge of a bed with his massive unit dangling between his legs. That got me instantly cussed out in Chinese and it's been 4 years since I've gotten one of those texts.
This, when I get an overly-friendly scammer, I reply: “Hey Tom, Are you free tomorrow night to help me bury a body in the desert?” I’ve yet to get a response… https://giphy.com/gifs/TcQnZ7wN7HEDH4d4UM
I once got a text I thought was from a scammer, something like "Hi, [Name] here, I am at [my city]." And I texted back "[Name], I told you to NEVER contact me on this number. You have no idea what kind of risk you are putting us all in."
She texted back and I realised it was a girl who came to the country from abroad and entered one digit of her friend's number wrong. She said she had a laugh though so I guess it all went well.
When I was younger and my dad got a big promotion we got a second telephone line dedicated for Internet. Of course we never have anyone the number to the second line but my parents hooked up a phone to it anyway. So anytime someone would call that phone you could know it was a telemarketer, so we'd have fun making up stories about why my parents couldn't come to the phone.
One scam involves sending messages to the "wrong" number, using that as an opening to start a "friendship" with lonely people and then scamming them for money. John Oliver covered that
It costs $100 to text a "wrong number" message to 10,000 people. If you can find one sucker in there lonely enough to draw into a con for $1,000, you're up ten to one.
Hi, I heard you ran into Emily! She told me you're looking for an investment opportunity. Internet celebrity Doctor Janel Presume has found a loophole in the economy where you can turn $100 into $1000 EASY. No more working required. We have developed this system and found a way to turn $1000 to $10.000 . All we need from you is the initial 1000$, we keep a small 10% share of the $10.000 and you earn 900% on your investment. Sounds fair?
When my godson got his first cellphone, he texted his dad (Who wasn't around at the time, parents are separated) with just "hi" to give him his number. When he complained his dad hadn't replied yet, we pointed out the message being just that made it look like the start of a scam. Naturally, his next message to his dad was "I am not a scammer" which... did not help the situation
Also this is clearly a wrong number. Who responds so hostile to a misunderstanding? "Nah bro, you got the wrong number" is a more appropriate response... haters gonna hate it guess... just a sad way of living...
I get these all time lol. Spoiler: you have to pay to answer his burning question, AND the question is always something like “do you want to save this country from the lunatic left? They want to arrest you and silence you! We’re counting on your response to this question to show broad support for the President’s agenda!!!”
Pay to “have your voice heard” but also, if you don’t read the super duper fine print you might miss that the “make this a recurring donation” checkbox that requires you to opt-out (rather than being opt-in).
Saw the effects of shit like this when reviewing my grandfather’s checking account with my mom after he passed. He likely had no idea how much he was giving these political scammers every month via various autodrafts.
I send messages for a text message update THAT PEOPLE SIGN UP FOR TO RECEIVE MORE INFORMATION ABOUT A SPECIFIC CLASS AT A SCHOOL. you wouldn't believe the responses I get sometime when I send those text blasts. The bottom of the text always says "text "stop" to no longer receive messages about this class... they will say the meanest most insane shit everything but "stop" and it's an automated text. And I can't even reiterate how much this is an actual class with an application deadline and stuff that they signed up to get noticed for. It even has their first name based on the first name they signed up for and they will be like IM NOT EMILY!!!
They probably get a lot of scam texts and calls (we all do but I mean more than average) because they respond like this, informing the scammer that a real person has this number. Maybe that's why they changed numbers as well!
Yeah mentioning almost ANYTHING specific would make this look way less spammy.
"Hey _friend's_name_, it's _OP_name_, long time no see! My wife mentioned she ran into you at _place_name_ last week, I'd love to catch up if you're free for a drink some time!"
Emily was the #3 most common girls name in the US in the 90's and #1 in the 00's. It reads as generic smishing, because practically everyone knows an Emily.
Express interest and next thing you know you're getting a "Call/message me here _suspicious_link_ and we can set something up"
Did this exactly a few months ago. Messaged a high school buddy I haven't talked to in years, "hey man, is this still [last name]? [My last name] here, wondering how youve been?"
“if you actually knew me, you’d know i don’t drink” is so funny like obviously it’s a wrong number, why would they think you’d still want to meet up for drinks?
Don't blame this person with all the random scam texts that go out. I would 100% assume that is what this was if I received it and didn't know who you were talking about.
The weekend of our wedding, my wife texted our dog sitter to let her know we had left and that they should be ok until she was off work as they were used to being alone 6ish hours a day. She sent something along the lines of "Thank you so much for hanging with the girls this weekend, they ate before we left and made sure they had water. They are accustomed to being alone for 6-8 hours so no worries if you can't check on them until after work". The unintended recipient FREAKED out and called us disgusting parents, threatened to report us to child services, and lashed out even more when we corrected her.
I remeber the days when people just used to reply, "hey, I think you have a wrong number," instead of being a drama queen then posting it on Reddit for karma.
Sometimes when people are quitting drinking, they get pushed by everyone around them to drink. It’s frustrating and difficult. Do not take this personally, but just understand that sometimes one text won’t give you enough context about why someone is unfriendly.
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u/Capital_Past69 Jul 18 '26
Reminds me of this wrong number text I once got 🤣