> If anyone legitimate gets caught up in that, I’m not sorry, blame the spammers for ruining it for everyone.

This is what I really hate about the pig butchering scams. They start out like a wrong number text, and don’t even get into the scam. From what I understand it takes them months as they build a relationship. Now when there are legitimate wrong numbers from people making mistakes, people are likely to ignore it or report it as spam, and the person never knows they didn’t reach their friend.

I got a voicemail recently that sounded like a mother leaving a message for a son who she hasn’t heard from in a while, saying she hopes he’s ok, she would like to talk to him, etc., all while sounding distraught.

Was it real? Did she really just call a wrong number? Or was it an emotional hook for a scam? I don’t know, because I decided it was best for me to simply ignore it.

Once upon a time I might have called back and let her know it was a wrong number instead of leaving her wondering. Not anymore though. Thanks scammers for shitting all over society with more ease than ever before.

I do the same. If I agreed to subscribe, I’ll click the link. If I didn’t, I report it as spam. If Gmail offers me to unsubscribe, I will not do that and will still go ahead and report as spam. I’ll also do this if a third party has has registered with my email with the service without my consent, since they should have verified it before spamming it, so they still deserve the lost sender reputation.