‘Wrong Number Text’ – Texas Women Be Warned It’s Not a Mistake

Kindness is an art form that is practiced often in Texas. We have some of the most helpful people on the planet who call places like Marfa, Brownsville, Alvin, Vidor, and Baytown home.  However, law enforcement agencies from the Texas Department of Public Safety to the FBI and your local sheriff are urging you to put caution ahead of kindness when it comes to unsolicited text messages.

We've all seen and probably received a spam text message. They are usually easy to recognize because they offer some incredible prize or an incredible deal and they usually include a sketchy website and a lot of grammatical errors and misspellings. Almost all of us know to avoid those.

However, there is a new kind of text scam that has been circulating a lot in Texas over the past few weeks. The messages look like the ones you see below.

That looks innocent enough, right? A lot of men would get that text and just blow it off. But a lot of women, because it's their nature to be a bit more helpful, might be inclined to reply "wrong number".  And while they are "right" that it's a "wrong" number they would be very wrong to respond to this text at all. 

By replying, the scammers now know that your number is a "hot number". In other words, it's connected to a potential victim. So they might send you another innocent message.

The scammers are counting on the helpful nature of Texas women to respond to these messages. Okay, for clarity, the scammers don't know if they are sending the text to a man or a woman, they just know that women have more of a tendency to respond to these kinds of messages than men do because women are helpful and men, generally are not.

By the way, these are actual texts that I have gotten on my phone in the past week so the scammers are very active right now. I would imagine that's because a lot of families are preparing to make big expenditures for the holiday shopping season. That might mean banking information or credit card information would be readily available on your phone.

The same phone is getting text messages like this:

This is how we know scammers are targeting women. Men don't send "new baby" texts and they certainly don't ask for a "proxy" to go visit the mother and child. I do have to admit, it's a compelling text that good-hearted people would want to reply to. But alas, the sender isn't of pure heart. In fact, they might be some of the most evil people on Earth.

Just don't let your good nature and fine upbringing bring you down in a text scam. Be cautious and remember not every message needs a reply. If it's supposed to be for you, they will find a way to reach you from a number you recognize.