cellphone spam?!

[prozac]

I am pissed.

I got a text message this morning that reads:

"howdie. a buddy gave me ure cell # and I hear you are kinda enjoyable person. My online name is pookitou19982, but Im somewaht shy, so i don't wanna let you know who I am yet. So, if you're interested, come find me at pookitou19982.datehop.org."

I see 3 possibilities here. Number one, some bloody asshole gave my cell number to some weirdo. I'm not in the habit of throwing my number out willy-nilly so this is quite disturbing to me.

Number 2, this is some sort of shitty web 2.0-infiltrate-your-life-text-message-marketing to try to get me to sign up for an account on some crappy social network, which is also quite disturbing to me. Where the hell would they get my number?! If Telus is giving it out I will seriously lose my cool.

Number 3, it's someone I know who is so lame they would make an account on this stupid site and try to make me look at it. I really hope nobody I know is this retarded.

Either way I consider it an enormous invasion of my privacy and am not particularly interested in giving more of my personal info to some random website to find out what it's all about.



Seriously considering changing my cellphone number.

[rawb]

YA ITS SPAM l

[PwInCeSs]

Haha its spam, my mom got that text message the other day, she was so confused.

Shes on telus to..

[prozac]

Ok so then who gave these fucks my cell number?! I can handle email spam but this is just too much.

[ebbomega]

Reason to avoid telus like the plague #523

[dabbler]

was your bluetooth enabled?

[rawb]

THERES A FINITE AMOUNT OF PHONE NUMBERS, IT COULD JUST BE SOMEONE SPAMMING THE WHOLE LIST l

[prozac]

Originally Posted by dabbler

was your bluetooth enabled?

noooo. Never use it.

[Phrenetic]

telus wishes me a happy birthday every year lolz

[Bitchin]

I've had txt spam before.. i emailed the company that sent me the txt, with a huge complaint cuz at the time it cost me to get thier shit spam txt. They said they sent the txt to random numbers tho.
let alone, I'm a girl and dont need viagra!

[miss.myra]

Yeah it's weird because cell phone numbers are not publicised!

anywhoo, rawb could be right!

or, it's possible that someone signed up for some sort of service and put your number in. The reality is that there are TONS of premium text messaging services out there (joke of the day, horoscope, etc.) where people get CHARGED to receive them by a third party. You'd be smart to call Telus and ensure you are not getting charged for the messages.

Jess- has there been more than one sent?

[Mangle]

Spam comes and goes for me. There's this one number that keeps calling, and whenever I answer, it just makes some faint noises. It's always the same number, and sometimes it calls 5 time a day for a few days, then nothing for a couple months.
I also get texts for people trying to send me photos occasionally.
I'm on Fido.

Speaking of spam, I actually got that "I am the king of Zaierre and I'm in exile with a billion dollars" email IN THE MAIL. Someone actually paid UK postage to physically mail out spam emails. Amazing. I'd never seen that before.

[prozac]

I just called Telus and they can block web/email originating text messages, which I had them do. I wasn't charged for it, which I was expecting as it really didn't smell like premium text messaging.

And Myra, I just had the one. That was enough for me. I don't like the idea of random dodgy companies having my cell number though. I'll just tell myself that Rawb is right.

[miss.myra]

You can also try to reply to those messages with the word 'stop' and that can also unsubscribe you from the service if it is premium.

I'd be interested to know exactly how Telus can block SMS originating from web and email without impacting text usage otherwise.

[prozac]

^yeah I was curious about that too and I asked him about it, and he assured me that it would only block web-originating texts. Maybe if I'm lucky this means I will stop getting those marketing emails from Telus too.

And I know about premium text pretty well from working at a dealership, but I'm pretty darn sure that's not what this was.

[ebbomega]

Originally Posted by rawb

THERES A FINITE AMOUNT OF PHONE NUMBERS, IT COULD JUST BE SOMEONE SPAMMING THE WHOLE LIST l

[rawb]

Originally Posted by miss.myra

I'd be interested to know exactly how Telus can block SMS originating from web and email without impacting text usage otherwise.

TEXTS ORIGINATING FROM THE WEB/EMAIL HAVE TO PASS THROUGH TELUS' SMS GATEWAY, WHICH IS A BIG BOX THAT DOES NOTHING BUT TRANSCRIBE WEB/EMAIL MESSAGES TO TEXT

WHILE THIS IS GREAT AND ALL, ITS PRETTY TRIVIAL TO HOOK A COMPUTER UP TO A CELL PHONE AND SPAM THE SHIT OUT OF AN SMS NETWORK THROUGH THE PHONE, SO THAT ALL MESSAGES LOOK LIKE ITS COMING FROM JUST A REGULAR HANDSET

SIEMENS ACTUALLY MAKES GSM DEVICES THAT DO THIS EXCLUSIVELY, IVE WORKED WITH A COUPLE OF PEOPLE THAT DO THIS (NOT SPAM, JUST CONVERT EMAIL/INTERNET MESSAGES TO TEXT)

GUYS I CAN TALK ABOUT THIS FOR HOURS WHO WANTS A VISIO

[ppcock]

did you get any of my penis pics?

now in ASCII!

[ebbomega]

Originally Posted by ppcock

did you get any of my penis pics?

now in ASCII!

I didn't know you could subpixel ascii art like that...

[ppcock]

it's just a "/"

that's it.

[Phrenetic]

Originally Posted by ebbomega

I didn't know you could subpixel ascii art like that...

PWNTTTTTTTTTTTed

[ebbomega]

Originally Posted by ppcock

it's just a "/"

that's it.

I like how you included the pubes.

[rawb]

THEY CALL ME "L" l