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I successfully rickrolled a spam text bot; how's your Sunday going? (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 months ago by Takeshidude to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 52 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Never answer suspicious calls or texts .... delete them immediately and don't give any response. Any time I get things like this on SMS, social media, phone calls, whatever and I don't know who or what they are, or they are automated or digitally created - I delete them immediately, block the contact and report them (if you have this option) as quickly as possible.

By answering them and replying ... you've just confirmed to them or the bot that you are a real phone number, you are human and that you respond to texts.

You'll probably be getting more texts and calls in the future.

You didn't play the spam text bot ... the spam text bot played you.

[–] toynbee 20 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I have a friend who at least used to answer calls from unknown numbers "hello, this is [their full name]." When I questioned them about it, they said something like "I don't think my identity is valuable enough to hide anything."

Even back then, when I was far less informed, I was taken aback by that.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

His identity wasn't valuable before but it is now .... to someone else but not him

I used to be kind of indifferent to all this stuff a long time ago but I'm not any more. I've had weird stuff happen to my credit card, email, social media accounts that I know my identity, as boring and simple as it might be, is valuable .... it's valuable to me.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Take this with a grain of salt, but there is one example of answering scam calls that was really effective for me. I had been getting spoofed calls that looked like they were coming from my bank. The first one I actually answered and got some real people on the phone (thankfully realized it was a scam before saying anything bad).

Anyway, these guys were calling me several times a day. I finally decided to start answering every call and just setting my phone down on the table and letting it run. The calls are probably automated, but when you answer it transfers it to a real person. By picking it up every time I was wasting that real person's time. They stopped calling very fast after I started doing it and haven't called since.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I still don't answer no matter who or what I may think it is ... even if I sorta suspect that it may be my bank, I still won't answer and usually I'll call my actual bank and ask them if they tried to call me about something.

I kind of did what you said for a while but it's too much of a waste of my time to deal with. I just don't bother any more and after about a year or two, I got fewer and fewer calls. I'm so bad with my phone that even my family and friends complain to me that they never hear from me and that they complain that I don't answer the majority of their calls.

I really don't like phones any more and I only ever use them if I really, absolutely need to talk to someone.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

Well that's the thing, doing that technique I mentioned takes no time whatsoever for me but DOES take time for them. It's a nice petty little revenge.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

restart your phone after deleting the msg from unknown numbers

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 months ago

Ay, yo, you best step off my girl Makiyo! Me and her got a thing going after we met at a medical equipment conference I don't remember going to

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

My Sunday's going great! I'm in this weird hungry mood though and it got so bad that I'm now sketching a drawing that has this huge french fry burger in it haha 😂

Just a heads up though! You shouldn't answer calls or respond to texts like this, because the AI can use a sample of your voice to scam your family and friends by mimicking you, and collect other data from you. If there's a number that I don't recognize I don't answer it

[–] Zerlyna 1 points 2 months ago

oh i never thought of that! Someone called me yesterday at work and I answered but just said Hello. My cell phone area code is not where I live now and most of the spam calls are from there, so when a number from the current area code calls, it's usually legit.

[–] toynbee 3 points 2 months ago

That's... Weirdly specific. Unless you are a medical professional, I suppose, in which case your contact information would probably be in some kind of registry.