Making fun of the scammer who sends you an SMS seems harmless: it's a very bad idea

It's sad, but we have normalized receiving scam attempts everywhere. An SMS from the Post Office tells you that it has not been able to deliver a package, on Instagram they tell you that you have won an iPhone, your email spam box is saturated and now scams even arrive in your home mailbox. You may have been tempted to respond and troll the scammer a little, but it's best not to.

Why it is not a good idea to respond. It doesn't matter if it's just to make fun of you, answering sends a very clear message to whoever is on the other end: this phone number is active and its owner wants to talk. This means that more similar messages continue to reach you and also that your data continues to circulate on the dark web. In addition, security experts cited by the Wall Street Journal warn that, if you have a very long conversation, you may end up giving out some details without realizing it, such as the country and city where you live, your age or details about your family.

Scambaiting. It is what is known as the practice of intentionally interacting with scammers, generally pretending to be a naive victim to waste their time and give you a laugh. There are entire subreddits dedicated to these types of anecdotes, with users who maintain conversations for several weeks and share them with the community. There are even creators whose content focuses exclusively on scambaiting, such as the YouTube channel Scammer Payback, in which the protagonist invents elaborate characters and the craziest situations. He has even collaborated with the authorities to dismantle scam networks.

What should be done. It is best not to participate in any way with these types of messages, not even respond to ask them to stop contacting you. Rosario Fuentes, cybersecurity expert at TrendLife, says in WSJ that her golden rule is "ignore, block and report." Of course, it goes without saying that you should never click on any link, even if it appears to be from your bank or a courier service. We have already seen too many times how the sender can be falsified, it is what is known as SMS spoofing and it also happens in phone calls.

Tempting, but risky. It can be very tempting to make fun of someone who is trying to steal from you, but it is no joke. Whoever is on the other end has your contact information and can use it against you. There have been cases of intense telephone harassment and even death threats.

Professional scambaiters warn that it is not a good idea to do it if you do not have experience, and if you do it you have to take many precautions. The first thing is to create a false identity and, if you are going to make calls, use an alternative phone number or ideally VoIP services. If you are speaking from a computer, they recommend using a virtual machine to prevent them from accessing your system and of course a VPN.

Don't do it on social networks either. Finally, a personal anecdote. One day I received a message on Instagram from a man who claimed to be interested in being my sugar daddy. All he asked me was to send him photos of my feet and he would pay me a fortune (I don't remember how much, but it was a lot). It occurred to me to humor him, not for long, but just enough to laugh a little and share a couple of screenshots in my stories. Well, the scammer reported me to Instagram and they ended up penalizing me for "offering sexual services." I tried appealing to Meta, but to no avail.

Image | Xataka with Gemini