• reddig33@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    175
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    2 months ago

    There’s no such thing as “anonymous” texts — just texts the government can’t be bothered to trace back to their origin.

    • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      61
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      2 months ago

      Well you can send people “SMS” messages from an email system; if you know who the carrier on that number is. usually it’s [the phone number]@[their service].

      it’s not hard to find what the domain name for the email transfer service is, and who owns which cell phone, and they can just buy a list of phone numbers that ping off college cells under specific circumstances that would indicate they’re college students.

        • Case@lemmynsfw.com
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          10
          ·
          2 months ago

          I know this type of information from an IT help desk job. Medical IT. Shit gets weird in hospitals.

          • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            edit-2
            2 months ago

            Yeah, I used to use it to send out 2 factor setup links for RSA. Users standardly couldn’t get their work email on their work phone until they were enrolled in Intune, so new users, or users who handnt already set up Windows Hello, I’d just grab their ISP from the cell phone distribution list or ask them if it was a personal phone and send it through att or Verizon etc.

        • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          16
          ·
          2 months ago

          Yup.

          And you can have an email server in some Latin American country who doesn’t give a fuck (and why should they?) and basically create a new domain when ever you get shut down for spammy spam.

    • Spotlight7573@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      40
      ·
      2 months ago

      There was the one case with the scammers in the UK using a homemade cell tower to essentially send out phishing texts directly to cell phones in an area, completely bypassing the phone company. It seems like this scare texts scenario would fit that kind of tech even better, as you only need to send out a message once to a large amount of people and you don’t need to collect information in response like in a phishing scenario.