Received a Strange Text


Jedi_Nephite
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I had something happen last week that I thought someone here might be able to help shed some light on.

First, let me provide some background information.  I have an in-law who has been struggling spiritually over the last several years.  It’s a long story, but my wife and I started to see the signs, as his personality started to change towards us, as well as other members of the family.  It got to the point where we had to stop talking to him, as he would just get argumentative, even when we agreed with him.  We also recently discovered that he hasn’t been going to church for two years.  Now, even though we avoided having long conversations with him, we still tried to reach out to him from time to time.  But he would just ignore us, that is, until a couple of weeks ago when my wife (and her sister) received a text from him, claiming that he was leaving the church.  Now, for very specific reasons, we haven’t responded to that text nor has my wife’s sister.  It is also important to note that this individual has a degree in programming.    When my wife talked to her sister about this recent text, she warned her not to open any attachments that he sends.  Apparently, a few months ago, he sent her a virus with spyware on it.  She and her husband have reasons to believe this was intentional.

Fast forward to last Thursday afternoon.  I received a group text.  In the brief pop-up notification, I see my brother’s name, as well as the name of this individual included in the names of the recipients of the text.  I assumed it was a family group text, though I thought it was strange that both my brother and this individual would be part of the same group text, as they have never met each other.  However, when I opened the text, it turned out to be nothing but trash, to put it mildly.  I won’t go into too much detail, except to say that there were two pictures included.  The first picture was a strange picture of this individual (not necessarily inappropriate, just strange looking) but that picture was followed by a pornographic image.  

What’s particularly strange about this is that, two of the numbers included in this group text are numbers he shouldn’t have had, as they no one would have given him those numbers.  Additionally, one of the other numbers was my wife’s old cell phone number from over a decade ago.  Yet, he knows her current phone number.  Two or three of the numbers were not numbers either of us recognized.  And one of the numbers was the phone number of this individual, as if he was one of the recipients of the text.  The number that actually sent the text was not a number we recognized; it was also a landline.  However, the first picture was clearly a headshot of him.  As such, we’re not sure if he sent this text or not.  Too many things just don’t make sense.  If he sent it, why would he include my wife’s old number? How did he send it from a different number, not to mention a landline? How would he have the phone numbers of people that he has never met and who never gave it to him? If it wasn’t him, how was there a picture of him in the text?

Any thoughts?

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34 minutes ago, Jane_Doe said:

Options: 1) ignore and forget it. 

2) in a separate text/call say “hey just so you know, this happened”. And then ignore and forget. 

And never  open unfamiliar attachments. 

Thanks.  But what I’m really trying to ask is whether it is possible to send a text from a landline number, and how likely that would be given the other factors I listed.  We are trying to make sense of the situation, and need to understand it.  If this individual in question sent this text, then it is an indication of his current state of mind.

I didn’t open any attachments.  The pictures just appeared, just like when someone sends a photo via text message.

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Is it possible to send a text from a landline? No.

Is it possible to use a landline to call a service that will transcribe a message into a text? Yes, but I doubt that is what happened here.

Is it possible to send a text from a computer or computer-like device and make it look like it's sending from a landline? Yes, and in fact it is trivial to do. 

The "from" line you see displayed on your phone is read from metadata in the message. It can be edited to look like anything.

What likely happened is a device owned by someone you know was compromised. A phisher sent a blast out to any number available and chose a number at random to use in the "from" field.

DO NOT RESPOND TO THAT THREAD.

What the phisher is looking for is evidence of an active phone number. A list of "proven active" phone numbers is more valuable than a random list of numbers.

This particular phishing attempt tried to use a familiar photo, which has the potential to ensnare those that dont want to ignore a friend. The pornographic image is intended to provoke outrage, hoping you will reply asking them not to send such content. 

Ignore and delete the messages, or report them as spam. Contact the relative through a different medium to ask if they are ok and recommend they change passwords immediately.

 

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In a different strain, I received a message this week from an unfamiliar number. It was a group message of 20 sequential numbers.  8310, 8311, 8312, etc.

I am sad to say that my phone proceeded to blow up with requests to be removed from the group. "Who dis?" etc. Report them all as spam and let the tech nerds filter out the problem. They can see the meta data and reporting as spam is fairly unlikely to negatively impact any one using their phone legitimately

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20 minutes ago, MarginOfError said:

Is it possible to send a text from a landline? No.

Is it possible to use a landline to call a service that will transcribe a message into a text? Yes, but I doubt that is what happened here.

Is it possible to send a text from a computer or computer-like device and make it look like it's sending from a landline? Yes, and in fact it is trivial to do. 

The "from" line you see displayed on your phone is read from metadata in the message. It can be edited to look like anything.

What likely happened is a device owned by someone you know was compromised. A phisher sent a blast out to any number available and chose a number at random to use in the "from" field.

DO NOT RESPOND TO THAT THREAD.

What the phisher is looking for is evidence of an active phone number. A list of "proven active" phone numbers is more valuable than a random list of numbers.

This particular phishing attempt tried to use a familiar photo, which has the potential to ensnare those that dont want to ignore a friend. The pornographic image is intended to provoke outrage, hoping you will reply asking them not to send such content. 

Ignore and delete the messages, or report them as spam. Contact the relative through a different medium to ask if they are ok and recommend they change passwords immediately.

 

Thank you for that explanation.  Yeah, I promptly deleted the text after I received it.

What you said leans more towards what I was thinking.  The only thing that doesn’t make sense, though, is that if it was someone else who hacked his phone, how would they send it to two phone numbers he would have no way of having on his phone?  That’s the part we really can’t understand.

 

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