Why people are trolling their spam texts

I did not reply but many other people did. Some people are trying to get back at their spammers by sending funny messages. They are fighting back with snark and posting their conversations on the internet.

According to Jack Whittaker, a PhD student in sociology at the University of Surrey, the number of people who are striking back through scambaiting is on the rise. As a result, experts say responding defeats the point.

@bellabeeeaar

It's not a new thing for scam texts to seek to scam their recipients. A scam in which someone pretending to be a Nigerian prince claimed to need the receiver's help in depositing a large sum of money is one of the earliest examples of digital mail.

The scam artists switched to texting once they became common. There will be more personal text messages in 2022. They often use a generic first line or address the receiver by the wrong name in order to prompt a reply.

You are not the only one who has received such messages recently. According to J. Michael Skiba, a professor at Colorado State University who specializes in cybercrime and international financial fraud, there has been an incredible spike in the number of unwanted text messages. Worldwide, 90 billion of them were sent last year, and in the US, 47 billion of them were sent in the first half of the year. The US alone will lose 86 million dollars in 2020 due to scam texts. Skiba says people are just bombarded with these

Skiba says that texting has advantages over email, including the fact that a note from a phone number is less likely to be seen by a scam artist. Many people feel a need to reply to a text. Skiba says that it is a psychological trick that you know the text is not correct but that you want to help.

The person on the other side is most likely working with a group of people in a call center who are trying to get you to agree to something. A single response is all it takes for a scam to be successful. There is a domino effect that could lead to more text messages being sent to your phone. Getting your personal information is a bonus for scam artists who want to sell your number to other groups.

Skiba recommends not responding at all.