How to Deal with Scam Texts | What to Do When You Receive Scam Texts

Received A Scam Text? Do This to Protect Your Bank Account | How to Spot & Stop Scam Text Messages

What is a scam text? These are innocent-looking texts you receive like, “are you there”, “sorry, can’t now”, “how are you?”, and so on. The purpose of these texts to intrigue you to start a conversation. These questions are designed in such a way that a lot of us will respond when asked.

When you reply to these texts, the first thing that happens is that your phone number gets confirmed that it’s a valid and real number (Confirmation Trap). Your number then goes to a phone database which is the scammers’ favourite and gets sold on the dark web.

Later on, you will start receiving scam calls on your phone from various scammers from different parts of the world because you have a confirmed active number.

The second thing that happens is that scammers will try to make you click on a link to take control of your phone (Phishing Links). If that happens, you can expect your bank accounts and credit cards to get drained at some point.

If you do not click on anything, the scammers will try to keep the conversation going to lure you to fall in love with them or other tactics to make you pay (Emotional Manipulation).

There are many other things that possibly can happen, but now you know the basics on how scam texts work.

So the next time you receive a scam text, the best and the only thing to do is not to reply and delete it immediately.

If you want to go one step further, you can report this text as a scam on your phone. Depending on your operating system, there is an option to report texts as scams and you should utilize that whenever necessary.