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.
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.
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.
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.