Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Phone

It is moments like these that make me remember why I do all this. I may or may not have texted a wrong number and gotten caught up in something regular people dread and that may make them get caught in paranoia.

I got a scam message.

What I actually received

The message was quite simple, to be honest. It said

You ordered a service and did not pay. You now owe our company 80$.

So far so good. What caught me a little off-guard was the name. It was my name. The real one, not m4iler, not Mr. Enis (Peter Enis, you know), but my real, legal name. That was the only thing that caught me. I didn’t give that out in that particular chat, not any others, for that matter. I never write my real name in these chats.

The good part

My Whatsapp number, as alluded in my previous phone-related posts, is not my “real” phone nubmer. But what does that mean? Simple. I bought a SIM card, spent 10 minutes putting it in a burner phone, then I set up Whatsapp with that SIM card on my normal phone and tossed the card. It’s prepaid, so no leads back to yours truly (not from the SIM, at least), but there was no tie to my real name at all. All bought cash, so unless my extortionist is a nation state that can correlate my ATM usage to purchases made by card (possibly via a spy pigeon), I don’t think that is likely. It is a nice idea, but it’s not likely.

The more likely eventuality is that one of my contacts who has this number also uses one of those “scam-protection” applications. I believe I heard some talk about one of them selling data to third parties for a fee, filling out numbers with people’s real contacts. These are good, since as a scammer, you don’t need to hunt down leads and find out people’s names, they’re right there, up for grabs, plus a good indication of what a user’s social profile looks like! I have to get my hands on one of those… But back to me!

The way I see this working is one of my contacts has this application and me saved by my full name. Most of my friends have me as “that weirdo,” so they’re out. My family has me as “son” or “spare parts” in the case of my siblings, they’re out. What remains are contacts who I am in contact with via Whatsapp, but not too close for them to have a nickname for me. Could be the neighbours or someone I met briefly, gave my number to and never stayed in touch with. The possibilities are endless. Regardless, this number is out there and tied to me, now.

The best part

If you want to sniff out a scam like this, look for the following:

• Guy calls you at 3AM (dead giveaway)
• He presents you with a “done deal” (You owe this and this, fuck you)
• When argued with like “I didn’t order shit, who are you,” it’s immediately “You can tell the cops, they’re on their way.”
• When pushed further, he will pull out the ol’ faithful: “I have the IP address and a full dossier, you’ll see soon enough.” (Pro tip: there is no IP address)
• When asked again for the IP address or any other information, he will tell you to fuck off and that you will regret not being scared shitless

These are but a few tips, they may also tell you they have your naked pictures, your shopping list, and his first message contained the good old “I do not want to have to discuss this with your family.”

Oh, you sweet summer child, please do. My mother would love to hear about me hiring hookers and ordering cocaine online. Please, amuse her as well as me!

The part I have been preparing for

When I tell people I have separate numbers for almost everything in my life, they go “Oh, you’re crazy! Why?” This is why. This entire situation is why I can tell a scammer to fuck off and not be scared for all my belongings or that someone will abuse my number.

If I had a single number for everything, it would be a disaster. I would feel violated, my privacy invaded, and the nagging doubt of how much more do they know would be always with me. Maybe not with everyone, but I am like that. If this number got burnt, I would be getting scam calls all day every day. I would go mad! I’d have to change my number and inform every single person I know that I am disappearing and to not trust that number again! My work, my bank, the government would all need an update on my person, since I would be uprooting my whole life tied to a single phone number…

But that’s not how I roll. Thanks to the precautions and preparations I took, I just get to repeat the happy dance once more, after more than a year in the clear. I buy a new SIM card, register a new WhatsApp account with it, toss it, and for at least a year, I’m done. If I wanted, I could put it on some people search website, find my own number, add a fake name to it, and when it inevitably leaks, I can do it again, or lead the stalkers/scammers on a happy run around for a Mr Smith from 1337 Suckney Street, 42069 Dickington, IL. I am not afraid to lose this number, because it is only for that purpose. It is an identifier, the same way I use companyname[@]mydomain.tld to set up e-mail accounts. When it inevitably leaks, I know who to blame. Here, I can only blame myself for not having switched numbers ages ago, but this time, the fact that I have my stuff set up the way I do means I don’t lose basically anything. I only have to inform the 5 or so people I contact, and most of the chats I am in are with my family and close friends, so they can pass the word around that “that idiot did it again.”

Final note on numbers and e-mails

Now that I think about it, I have everything set up redundantly. My family has a number, my friends get a number, and every company I ever contacted has an e-mail and a specific number. Those numbers may be grouped, but if I get two indicators, I know who leaked my shit. In this case, I don’t, since only one piece of voluntary information was known to me (my number), my name is shared among friends.

But let us imagine another scenario: Let’s say I only had one gmail account. That and nothing else. No phone, nothing. All my friends could contact me on gmail and that’s it. One day, my e-mail gets hacked by those evil evil hackers, and what have I got? Fuck all. I have nothing to rebuild from; at that point, I should start driving around friends’ houses telling them my new e-mail address, or just sending a message to the few I remember the e-mail for and hope they believe me and don’t flag me for spam!

Compartmentalization is key in this aggressive, scam-rich world. It is a way to maintain contact and gives me the ability to segment my life, not rely on a single point of failure. If I get a scam call on one number, I can burn that number and start using another. If that one gets burned quickly, I would probably start treating them as you would a leak in a spy agency: Give it to a portion of my friends and wait. If it leaks, I know it was from them. From there, I would start whittling down, adding buddies one by one to see which one causes my information to leak. At that point, I’d just tell that friend to save me under a different name, or just not give them my number for that specific application anymore. I’d file them under a “use burner numbers for this guy” label.

In closing

I hope you enjoyed me getting attacked by scammers as much as I did. It was exactly what the doctor ordered for this year, something to do, something to occupy my mind and see where the gaps in my armor are. No one is bulletproof, and I always say that, but now I have tangible proof of that fact, a theory to support it, and a plan to mitigate it. The mitigation is basically to burn shit down and start again, but not my whole life, just that one little part.

It is wonderful what an attack can do to my sanity. I envy my mum, she keeps getting spam, scam calls, all that good shit, and until now, I thought I was above it all. The thing is, no one is above it unless you never use the bloody app. Any app. It could happen on Signal next, for all I know! But I know that while I am not bulletproof, I have a plan to mitigate when it happens. That’s planning. Hoping for better days is not. What I did all those years ago when I separated my WhatsApp SIM from my other identities, it paid off today and I hope your plans come to fruition, too.