via
http://ift.tt/2tBaC0stheultravioletcatastrophe:
bossybed:
ghostslostinwhatever:
memehumor:
Damn hackers
They’re all of pigeons
PSA because I sometimes go into Tumblr Mom™ mode and because I’ve been on the internet by myself for literally my whole life (like, since 3 years old) so I had to learn how to deal with this bullshit the hard way:
DO NOT REPLY TO THESE MESSAGES.
Even if you think, “oh, I know he’s lying, he’s not gonna trick me into giving him any of my information!” DO. NOT. REPLY. Not even to taunt the hacker. Because in truth, this person could very well be a hacker. Replying to them gives them an opportunity to hack your phone and you will be COMPLETELY unaware of it.
Yes, I know that it seems like everything went alright here, but if this person wasn’t a scammer and was, in fact, a hacker, the person he’s hacking would be in very big trouble right now.
This kind of hacker’s goal is to elicit a response message, and you can see how tempting it is to let them succeed. Again, do NOT fucking reply to these messages. I’m dead serious. It may be funny, it may seem like a good story to share with your friends or to post on Tumblr, but trust me, if it’s a real hacker, it’s not worth it.
Keep your icloud/other storage locked, keep your phone locked, and do not reply to any “fake scam” message that you receive (that means email, tumblr, whatsapp, etc etc)– ESPECIALLY NOT IF IT’S A TEXT MESSAGE.
Be careful out there, loves.
I’m interested to know how a “real hacker” would be able to do anything with just your phone number. The most I can think of is that they could call your carrier and use social engineering to try and get personal info from a rep there, but even this would be difficult because ALL carriers typically require some form of ID verification before they give out any info (not to mention, with the advent of wireless number portability, you can’t even be sure which carrier someone is with based solely on their phone number).
As far as I was aware, to really get anywhere with hacking your phone, the attacker would need your ICCID (the number on your SIM card) or your IMEI (the ID unique to your device), or else they would have to install some kind of malicious software on your phone, which would usually involve you clicking on something (like a link in a text). None of this could be accomplished by just replying to their text.
I’m pretty confident in this since I work for a phone company and I know how our network operates, but if anyone knows how this could be accomplished I’d appreciate the education :)
(Your picture was not posted)