For the past few months, I’ve been sporadically getting text messages from some insurance company. The most recent one (which is fairly typical) says
Almost all of them use the same name, and mention the same vehicle. There are just two problems: First, my name isn’t Seth, and second, my vehicle isn’t a Ford F150. Well, three problems: I already have insurance, and am not looking for a different company. Make that four: Even if I were looking for insurance, I wouldn’t buy it from someone spamming me.
So what’s the game, here? I understand just mass-spamming in the hopes that someone, somewhere, will take the bait, but why the blind guess at a name and vehicle? Is there some reason why they think that would make suckers more likely to respond?
I suppose that it’s theoretically possible that there really is a Seth somewhere with a 2013 F150, and that he really did have some contact with this company, and gave them the wrong number… but even in that case, it’d still be spam, and an unlikely tactic for a legitimate company. And surely, even if “Seth” didn’t have insurance in May, by now he’s either gotten it elsewhere, or decided against getting it at all.
The scam often begins with a seemingly innocent chat initiated by a random person. The scammer might claim to have received the victim’s number from a mutual friend, while also appearing unsure if they have the correct number. However, this is just an act to engage the victim in conversation. Scammers have also been known to use images of attractive women to lure victims, preying on their desire for companionship or romance to build trust and establish a connection.
Largely in the same spirit as “you don’t have to be crazy to work here… but it helps”, there are intelligent people who reply to spam and there are stupid people who don’t, but spammers have intuited that one should never overestimate the intelligence of those one is trying to scam. Also their venality. I think the notion is along the lines of “Huh, somebody with a good deal on insurance accidentally sent me someone else’s info, gee I could get over on the world and claim that for myself!”
PS: I’m not sure this belongs in Factual Questions. Not that I’m in charge of such stuff. But it seems more IMHO.
My sister would respond, thinking she was being helpful. Something along the lines of, “My name isn’t Seth, but I have a friend at work whose husband’s name is Seth. Maybe you are looking for him? His email address is……”
I expect it’s not quite as blatantly illegal as that, though, since it’s been going on since May at least, and sites that do blatantly illegal things usually get shut down quicker than that.
If it actually is an insurance provider, they might be be hoping you’ll respond with‘I’m not Seth, but could I compare your rates with my current insurance?’
Because, honestly, most people think their insurance is too high.
ETA: the Ford F-100 is the 4th most common vehicle in America.
ET(further)A: Not that don’t think this is a scam, just sayin’
My guess: Seth went to one of those spammy insurance rate comparison sites looking for insurance for his 2013 F150, but he either didn’t want to give them his real phone number and entered a made up one, or he just mistyped his number, and the number he entered coincidentally happened to be @Chronos’s number.
Is this an gmail Google account? Because they allow multiple users to use the same email address. Pretty sloppy about that.
I had a possibly distant relative with the same name, who I heve never met, use the same gmail address. It is not a common name. Maybe he entered it in all CAPS or partial caps and gmail accepted it. After researching him I found that he got divorced and his e-wife was using he gmail.
Lets call her Stacey, because that is her name, and I got tired of it. Stacey has an appointment for car service next Tuesday, not any longer, I cancelled it. Dentist appointment, cancelled. No matter what I did I kept getting her shit emails. And I had no way of contacting her because any attempt would just sent an email back to my own inbox.
It took almost an entire year before she got the hint that maybe she should use a different email.
It’s not email; it’s text messages. The sender is (or at least, is listed as) 38976, and the links are all to the domain http:// goquote .co (that’s co, not com, and http, not https).
Maybe part of their gmail address was in caps and it got converted to lower case, maybe their adress had dots in it, maybe they mis-entered their own email adress in several accounts, I don’t know. But I do know that a person with the same first initial and same last name used the same gmail address that I do. He lives in Missouri and I live in Oregon. I batttled their many services with car dealerships, doctors appointments and general spam meant for her for several years until they finally quit using it.
Google ignores dots and capitalization in email address’. From google support.
Gmail also ignores capitalization in account names so first.last@ is the same account as FIRST.LAST@ (or any other combination) and also does not represent different accounts. This also applies to both account creation and usage.
Besides the excellent replies already, Chronos, consider this possibility. Send a billion emails or texts to random parties, and what are the odds that one of those arrives at a person named Seth? Or a person who owns an F150? Or both? It’s probably greater than zero, no?
