High strangeness

  • 15 January 2019
  • 1 reply
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About a week ago, I started getting text messages on my cell phone addressed to a Lisa (don't know) which looked like ads for social security, retirement, etc. The sender was not legitimate phone numbers, but blocks of numbers like 26382, 8764, etc. then the messages started pouring in. As soon as I deleted one, another one came in. Then the phone started ringing with phone numbers from Texas and Ohio from numbers not in my contacts. I started blocking, but more calls from different numbers poured in. My voice mail was getting jammed with messages like, "Press 2, if you want Press 4, if you don't want press 9." I shut my phone off, because of the constant ringing! I eventually set my phone on do-not-disturb mode. I was seriously considering changing my phone number, but then our email started getting endless ads for home improvement, retirement, and a lot of things reflecting searches on subjects that my wife and I did on the Internet. I warned my wife not to click on any links or not to even open these emails. I discovered that all of these ads originate in Liberia, Africa! Up until now, we never got so much spam! Maybe once in a great while. It seems that we are being targeted by someone, not by random robocalls. I have Webroot on my computers and as addons to web browsers, and never had any warnings about malware or viruses on our equipment, except for 2 instances several years ago. I used to be in the computer business a few years back, and I've never seen or heard anything like this. Does anybody have any ideas? While I wrote this I got another email and a phone call.

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Userlevel 7
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I've seen these too, unfortunately robo-calls/texts aren't anything we can do much about. Generally it means your number got out there somewhere, and they decided to try and send you a bunch of info as part of a scam. The best tool against this right now is being aware that it is a scam and to not reply or engage with them.