Ask HN: How does this group texting scam work?

1 pointyodon3 comments

The past couple mornings I have woken up to a new, different group text of 20 apparently random people with so far one message each morning of the sort "don't", "stop", "no", etc. What's going on here? It looks like someone is trying to kick off a swarm of "no you stop" replies, but I can't figure out what's the motivating scam behind this.

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I can’t help but wonder if your phone service provider is filtering the initial message that contains the actual scam, and all you are seeing are innocent people’s responses.

Or, I don’t know if text message origination numbers can be forged as easily as for voice, but if so perhaps your phone number is the one sending the original scam message and you’re just seeing replies.

And now the first imbecile just responded to one of these, kicking off an actual texting storm.

In case anyone else is experiencing this kind of scam, you can mute the group threads with a couple clicks on iOS (and presumably on Android as well)

[0] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.imore.com/how-mute-block-an...

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