← Back to context

Comment by rafram

3 days ago

Why would someone use one of these instead of good old fashioned SMS / iMessage / email spam?

There's zero spam filtering interfering this way, and you can target your messages very precisely.

  • Idk about zero, my Android device has SMS spam filtering, putting them in a separate inbox, hiding the notification, and with big red warnings if I indeed open them.

Can't be blocked by the provider, doesn't require a subscription with a provider, can falsify the sender, can send to everyone in range instead of guessing numbers.

The conspiracy explanation would be that the primary purpose is IMEI/IMSI data collection and/or wireless bug planting, and scamming is secondary purpose and/or deep sampling operation. Though, this is just my hallucination.