Newsflash:Â Bizarre Text Messaging Deaths Kill Hundreds – Chain Letter Experts Advise, Keep Forwarding Those Messages or You Might Be Next!
Have you ever received text message junk mail and spam? I have. It used to be my cell phone was mine alone. No wrong numbers, no texts advertising butcher shop meat (of all things!) and no chain letters.
Most of it is your typical “You won a trip to the Bahamas! Phone now to claim your prize!” I usually say, Yeah, as if, and push ‘delete’ with alacrity. That means I push the button with “cheerful readiness, promptness, or willingness” and in this case, almost a little satisfaction at having figured out it is a scam.
Last week, a few of us got curious, so I phoned one such number to see what would happen. We knew I didn’t actually win a trip, since in order to win contests you have to enter some sort of draw. This simple reasoning must be beyond some fools, who fall for scams because they assume that do-gooder text-telemarketers randomly pick their name out of a ginormous hat with billions of names in it, in order to give stuff away without making any money, just out of the goodness of their lily white hearts. But I digress.
A pleasant sounding young man answered the phone with a travel agency kind of name. I told him why I was phoning and he asked me for my location, which I gave since I am working away from home. He then asked me if I could give my name and confirm it with a credit card number “for authentication and prize claim purposes only“. I told him I didn’t have a credit card. He just hung up, didn’t even say goodbye. I guess that means he was legit?
And then there are the chain letter texts. You would think these might be a little shorter than the traditional email version, but not by much. Both of the ones I received actually came in 2 or 3 messages, since they were too long to fit in one. Both sported crap like this:
“Julie didn’t forward this message, and she was in a terrible car accident in which she lost both legs and one hand. But she didn’t lose her cell phone (convenient, eh?), and good thing, too. Because she remembered this message, forwarded it, and later that night she won the lottery!”
and this quality nugget:
“Make sure you send this message in the next 5 minutes and something wonderful will happen. But if you don’t, the only way they will be able to identify your mangled, twisted excuse for a body will be by your titanium navel ring, which your loving mother had engraved with your name for graduation.”
I need a cell phone spam filter. I bet they don’t make those yet.