# Text message spam?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/text-message-spam/388921>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [January 22, 2007, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/text-message-spam/388921 "2007-01-22T03:37:34Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Mindfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mindfield/32/19759_2.png) [@Mindfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mindfield)\
**Post date:** [January 22, 2007, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/text-message-spam/388921/1 "2007-01-22T03:37:34Z")

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**MindWife** just got a weird text message a few seconds ago.

> [@Weird text message](#):
>
> From: +3060001  
> Date: 1/21/07 10:30pm
> 
> We will see you in March
> 
> Love
> 
> Shiraz

Whiskey tango foxtrot?

Now, it could be a misdirected text message, but the “number” listed above isn’t even a valid phone number. Is it possible this is some kind spam? It isn’t selling anything, but it could be looking for an active phone number, or to see if someone responds with “wrong number” or somesuch. I’ve been spammed on my cell phone a couple of times but each time they were obvious spam. This one, not so much.

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**Author:** ![urban1a](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/e47c2d/32.png) [@urban1a](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/urban1a)\
**Post date:** [January 22, 2007, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/text-message-spam/388921/2 "2007-01-22T04:38:04Z")

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I got one a few days ago from someone on AOL offering to do something with my time shares. I am signed up for weather alerts only. Don’t know where this came from.

Only one I’ve gotten.

Bob

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**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\
**Post date:** [January 22, 2007, 8:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/text-message-spam/388921/3 "2007-01-22T08:07:48Z")

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Could the first text message have come through a web-based gateway, where you go to your carrier’s website and fill in a form and put in the destination phone number and hit Send and away it goes? That would give you a nonsensical originating number that only makes sense in the context of the carrier’s network. It would be easy to mistype the destination number.

I just sent a text message to my own phone through [my carrier’s web gateway](http://www.fido.ca/portal/web2fido/compose.do#sms), and the message arrived with an originating number of “+008000”, which makes no sense as a Canadian phone number.

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**Author:** ![Mindfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mindfield/32/19759_2.png) [@Mindfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mindfield)\
**Post date:** [January 22, 2007, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/text-message-spam/388921/4 "2007-01-22T16:27:17Z")

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I hadn’t thought of an SMS web gateway; I’ve never received a text message that way before. (Even the promotional or reminder notes I get from Rogers show an area-code-and-number as the originator) I guess it’s possible, though, and it was just a mistyped phone number that happened to be my wife’s. It just seemed a little out of place as having obviously been a response to a previous text message, which made me wonder why they just didn’t use the “reply” option on their cell phone.

_shrug_

Better than credit consolidation service voicemails.