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A special thanks to all the people at Malwarebytes and ThreatDown for sharing the text messages they received from scammers.
Many of us have received texts like these. Often super short, some flirty, some with a business tone, or sometimes just a simple ‘hello.’
You don’t know the sender, and they look like an honest mistake. But they’re not. All the messages are carefully crafted to seem plausible—so you don’t immediately feel suspicious—and short—to trigger your curiosity.
The intention of these messages are to get you to be confused enough that you will reply, perhaps by saying they have the wrong number.
Here are some of the messages our team has received recently:
1. The one-word text
2. The “who are you again?” text
3. The “tempting” text
Sometimes these involve inviting you for fun activities on the weekend, like a BBQ or some beach time. Sometimes, it’s just a dinner suggestion:
4. The business text
5. The “OMG i just woke up” text
These are just some examples, but we’ve seen so many more.
As soon as you reply, the scammer will initiate a friendly conversation. Their end goal will be to gain your trust and develop the relationship into a costly romance or investment scam.
From their end at least, some of my co-workers told them to go phish elsewhere.
However funny, we don’t recommend engaging with scammers in this or any other way. Here’s why:
We don’t just report on scams—we help detect them
Cybersecurity risks should never spread beyond a headline. If something looks dodgy to you, check if it’s a scam using Malwarebytes Scam Guard, a feature of our mobile protection products. Submit a screenshot, paste suspicious content, or share a text or phone number, and we’ll tell you if it’s a scam or legit. Download Malwarebytes Mobile Security for iOS or Android and try it today!
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Pieter Arntz 
Malware Intelligence Researcher
Was a Microsoft MVP in consumer security for 12 years running. Can speak four languages. Smells of rich mahogany and leather-bound books.
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