For the record, I’m a man whose name is not Annie and I don’t even like yoga.
They’re looking for a response even if your name isn’t Annie. You saying hey I think you got the wrong number or my name’s not Annie that is engagement. They’re hoping they could then talk to you from that point.
That makes sense. I guess there are people gullible enough to respond or they wouldn’t do it. I just have a hard time comprehending it.
A lot of times they’re looking for lonely people. Or maybe just bored people. There was a last week with John Oliver that did a pretty good in-depth dive on it.
I must have missed that Last Week Tonight. How sad that there are people out there who are that lonely.
It’s known, recently, as the “pig butchering” scam, and this is the telltale opener. The idea is that you respond with “hey, you’ve got the wrong number” and they can then open a dialog of “oh, sorry about that” and then spend weeks or months just conversing with you casually to build a “heh, what a crazy way to meet a new friend” sorta relationship. Eventually, they spring some kinda ask for money or malware on you, because they earned your trust.
Give it a google, it’s pretty fucked up, and completely counter-intuitive how effective and profitable it is.
Its a scam, when you show up to the yoga class, they will make you do yoga.
Could also be a “ping” where they send this text to a lot of numbers, and those that respond get recorded as “alive”
Then they can either:
- Do some recon on the number for spear phishing
- Save money by aiming the bigger part of the campaign (possibly multiple or large texts) only towards online numbers
- Some other reason 🤷
Reply with a double entendre, something either horrifying, or revolting. Just to mess with them.
