[Android 7.0 Samsung SM-G920V]
From someone named “Lisa.” It was rather short and undetailed, said she was eating at a local pizzeria (national chain tho note), said that she saw my info in her notes (?), decided to say hi, wondered how I was doing…
But I don’t know anyone named that. Said pizza chain does have some local franchises…“in my notes”…I work as a tutor, and making personal contact with a student would likely get me fired.
Note the text had the name already attached to the text (vs. a phone number), checked-and yep, it’s in my contacts.
Question then becomes: can a text message automatically add a contact to your address book?
My first thought…it sounds like a scam, an attempt to convince you that you know this person when you don’t. I’m willing to be convinced otherwise, but…
Correction-restaurant chain is apparently only local (as in NE part of the state).
Still, after X years of no contact with someone I barely know, you’d think she would (a) call me by name, and (b) let me know where I know her from.
If it was a bolt out of the blue, just wonder if (or how) a contact can be auto-added like that.
Why don’t you reply and see where it goes? Can you can construct a reply that doesn’t reveal too much?
I’ve never heard of a contact being added to your phone automatically. What happens when you Google the number? Or put it in Facebook?
I for one suggest that you do not reply in order to ‘just find out’
If it is genuine and has importance they will contact you again, but I can’t imagine anyone on the level trying to auto-add themselves to your contacts.
I can imagine it could be either a form of contact mining or data collection, after all facebook as a contacts synch function which goes through all your contacts and searches hem out on facebook so that it can dd them to your friends list.
A lot of modern smartphone (iphone, android) have the ability to add contact information to outgoing messages. Have a look at your phone: you may find a way of doing that.
I don’t know how that works.
Also, SMS is a kind of deep magic: it’s actually part of the telephone signaling system. It can do all kinds of things to some phones. It’s possible that there is some well-known weakness that allows malware to do something to your phone (but more likely it is just the feature I described).
Are you sure the phone has never been out of your possession, or alternatively that you haven’t simply forgotten handing it to someone to put in their contact details?
i heartily agree with casdave … do not reply … rather, block. as for how it got in your contact-list … no idea … i didn’t google that aspect. i simply googled can malware piggy-back text-messages? … and google did the rest.
This thread made me check my phone, because I got a text a couple of weeks ago which consisted simply of “Sorry, I can’t talk right now.” It didn’t list the name of a contact person, but just the phone number. It looked like a spoofed phone number that started with the area code and first three digits of my own phone number. I ignored it because it was scammy.
But your post made me want to be sure that nothing had been added to my contact list. Nope, it didn’t, but I’ll check now and then.
Delete the contact.
Move on.
Have some Pie.
Everybody likes Pie!
“Forgive me, I know about 17 Lisas. Which one are you?” But that really only works if you do it right away.
Given the circumstances, the best available answer is “Narcissistic Lisa” because anyone else would have assumed the need to identify themselves further. So even if you have known this person at some point, you probably don’t want contact with them.
Figured out who it was, long story short (yes, someone I know, forgot we had exchanged phone numbers six months ago).
Requesting mods to close thread.
Wow, Lisa was ready to party and you blew it.