I’ve been getting tons of ‘wrong number’ spam texts, and I don’t hate it?

Photo by Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge

At first, the text that arrived at 3:51PM appeared innocent.

It read, "Mr. Steven, I am very sorry, after our communication and understanding, I feel that we are not suitable in some ways."

It must be a wrong number. Who was this man? The nature of the disagreement was not immediately known. Steven did something to offend this person. I was curious, but didn't have enough to reply.

I received another text from someone named Amy asking about a location for coffee. Irene from Vietnam asked if I was still in New York. Sophia called me Laura and asked about the party we both attended.

The texts are clearly the work of a fraudster, but I don't care. They look like they are mistaken for a connection or identity to me. Some of the sting is taken out of it because they aren't soliciting me for money or just swindling me. I have received a lot of emails from Democratic politicians begging for more money in the wake of the decision to overturn the abortion law.

I’m 100 percent sure this wrong-number text is some sort of scam, but I appreciate that criminals have finally moved on from selling car warranties to whatever this is pic.twitter.com/ltSoJmpwGz

— Casey Newton (@CaseyNewton) May 2, 2022

In his most recent Substack, Max Read called it a rich world, animated by detail and alive with mystery, and I think he's right. According to a recent study, Americans receive an average of 3.7 scam calls and 1.5 scam texts per day, and almost all of it is meaningless.

There is a new genre of junk mail. I can't seem to get too worked up about it.

I encourage you to read his essay, because it will give you a deep dive into what is likely aromance scam, also known in China aspig butchering. They play on the recipients loneliness, sympathy, or general cluelessness to lure them into some sort of fraud that usually results in them being cheated out of a bunch of money. These types of scam are not good because they mainly prey on low income people.

The way they do that is easy to understand. The mark is drawn into a world of fake characters and fraudulent events if the sender is implied to be wealthy. High-end business travel, charity Galas, and Steak dinners are available.

According to Read, the scam is most likely to be an abused and captive worker operating multiple phones and attempting to con several people from a compound operated by shady gambling rings.

If I had to choose, I would choose these text messages over renewing my car warranty. They are better than those text messages from your phone number.

The Better Business Bureau suggests that you ignore the messages, block the numbers, and never give your personal information to strangers if you don't want your phone to be bombarded with junk mail. There is a guide on how to avoid these types of messages. This is America, where a TikTok video about "normalized scam" went so popular that people are begging it to stop.

There is a growing desperation among the scam artists of the world. They are running out of gullible boomers so they are getting more sophisticated. I can't seem to muster up a lot of outrage about it. Carrying all the world's knowledge in your pocket seems like a small price to pay.