Potential scam ahoy. I bought a watch from a guy on Reddit, he sent it but then said he sent the box, etc. and maybe a different watch, not the one I wanted. Whatever he sent should show up today, and I’m working through it with the guy who had some reputation on the watch exchange, but so many scams start out with shipping errors, etc. that I’m fairly worried.
We keep getting this calls from people who claim to be from the “Medicare Support Center.” They all sound like they are coming from a bullpen. They try to convince us that we need a “new plastic Medicare card” or some such rot. I just hang up on them. The only reason I answer is they are appearing as local calls, and sometimes we get important calls that don’t show up with a specific ID just a local number.
It sounds like he might’ve made a real honest shipping mistake and is trying to give you the heads up. Usually with shipping scams they just let you open the box with no warning and then ghost out.
Let us know how it goes!
It was just delivered but I’m stuck at work. At least I have a box!
Oh man, but we’re all here at the edge of our seats desperately wondering
Heh, so far we have a watch box, a CD, and a strap. Here’s hoping the rest comes along smartly.
Do any of you have an idea what the scam is here?
A friends son’s phone appears to have been “hacked” a few months ago (he’s pretty careless, so I’ll just assume he clicked on some terrible link or installed a bad app).
Since then in sporadic intervals (every few weeks or so), his phone sends out loads of SMSs to various international numbers (russia, georgia, canary islands, belgium…etc) - last instance was a few days ago with about 150 smss on one day. The messages themselves vary (he’s never received a reply):
“With this code: 518124 you can…”
“My network is WIFI, please proceed…”
“The selected answer is A…”
“I am not a bot. I am a real…”
“Let me continue…”
It seems like the messages are part of a “conversation”? But no replys?
Who is making money here? I doubt its the phone provider hoping to cash in on SMS fees…
Why such odd sporadic intervals?
I’ve only seen the screenshots of the sms overview page, so I’m not sure if the messages themselves also contain links.
Maybe I’m just too naive to think of an obvious scam here?
Obviously these are trigger codes for a vast network of sleeper agents serving a global criminal conspiracy like SPECTRE.
In fact, I do believe one of those numbers may actually be that of Ernst Stavro Blofeld.
Good thinking, perhaps its best we all retreat to our Fallout bunkers now? 
Seems like you guys are also stumped by the scam here…
Maybe do a factory reset on the phone? And then change every goddamn password on a computer. Time to introduce the kid to the idea of cybersecurity such as Bitwarden and 2FA. But it seems that phone is currently compromised, so, yeah, drastic measures time.
Yes, the nuclear option. It’s really the best solution.
Scrutinize any apps or data you may have in the cloud that could be compromised or a vector for the scammers, like an app or a game or something. Maybe just use the absolute minimum apps for a bit, then slowly introduce more, one at a time, until you have them all or you find a compromised one. Could be more than one.
Who knows what the scam might be. Maybe they just need random texts sent out from a phone not in their possession of perhaps from a phone in the country you’re from? I really don’t know, but does it even matter? You don’t want to carry a phone around in your pocket that is behaving in such a way.
Quite apart from sending SMSes, if the phone is compromised that way, chances are incoming SMSes may also be intercepted. That puts just about any account that uses OTP or phone-related verification at risk of being hijacked.
Yeah, my suspicion is that the phone is part of a kind of spam botnet, but IMHO the moment you discover that your phone has been compromised that way, you need to nuke it from orbit completely wipe / reformat / factory reset / whatever.
If I even get a hint that my PC is compromised I’m nuking partitions and clean installing the OS.
This is “buy a damn new phone” category for me.
Update, I got the watch.
You’re probably right. I was just curious & also told them to wipe the phone. Hope they follow through with it & while they are at it get a new sim card / number.
Yay! So that worked out well!
Gotta love free money. In other news, oddly I got a text from an unfamiliar area code (turned out to be in California) with the “How are you?” and feeling froggy I said, “who are you?” and then it went back and forth a bit, usually I’m really nasty but for some reason it seemed to be a genuine wrong number. Asked me for a massage appointment, etc., I asked about her family because I was going to be nasty about them, but it never turned that way. Tl;Dr, a nice back and forth with every sign of being a scammer but with no scam happening. Maybe I’m getting too cynical.
So,when you get a text that’s spam, but says type STOP, to unsubscribe, that’s just part of the scam, correct?
Because I keep getting them from Trump Junior and no matter how many times I block them on my phone, they keep coming back.
I was wondering if STOP actually has some chance of working…