Search Engine: Who's behind these scammy text messages we've all been getting?

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4.1 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 15 August 2024

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Search Engine is hosted by PJ Vogt and was named one of the top podcasts of 2023 by Time Magazine, The Economist, and New York Magazine (Vulture). Search Engine is an explainer show that tackles all kinds of questions, big and small. On this episode: who's behind these scammy text messages we've all been getting? To find more episodes of Search Engine or to submit a question to the show, head over to searchengine.show.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi 912 listeners, this is PJ Vote. I'm here to tell you about my show. It's called
0:04.9	search engine. Each week we try to answer a question we have about the world, no
0:08.8	question too big, no question too small. In case you want to check it out, here's a short preview of one of our
0:14.2	recent episodes where we try to answer a question that a lot of people have been
0:18.0	wondering about lately. Who's behind these scammy wrong number text
0:22.2	messages that everyone's been getting.
0:24.0	That mystery will send a reporter across the world on a quest to solve it.
0:28.0	I promise by the time we're done, you will never look at these messages the same way again. And A couple years ago I started getting some weird text messages. I'm going to describe these text messages to you, but if you own a cell phone and have
1:07.1	a pulse, you, like our listener, have probably gotten a few yourself. They follow a consistent but confusing MO.
1:18.0	An unrecognized phone number texts you, often with a question.
1:22.0	Were we on for dinner today. Are you still in Boston?
1:25.0	If you answer and tell them it's the wrong number,
1:28.0	they'll try to engage you in conversation.
1:30.0	It feels like a scam,
1:32.0	but the actual scam part never seems to materialize.
1:35.0	When I've gotten these text messages, I've mostly ignored them,
1:39.0	but I had a conversation recently with a reporter who had chosen not to.
1:43.0	Chapter 1.
1:45.0	Vicky Ho.
1:47.0	Okay, August 2022, you get a text message from a woman named Vicky Ho.
1:57.0	What did Vicky Ho want?
2:00.0	So, Vicky said to me, hi David, I'm Vicky Ho, don't you remember me.
	...

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