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Last night I received this text. (The scrubbed address is an apartment where I lived in 2006.) I thought, huh, creepy spam, but didn& #39;t think much of it.
But this morning, my sister called me to say she received a text message addressed to me about my house being on fire. It was the same spam, word for word. So I started googling.
A search for "some great guys checked ours for air quality and structure damage" brought me exactly one result: this text file. https://sickcompany.com/assets/api-data/create_incident_request_new.txt">https://sickcompany.com/assets/ap...
The text file seems to be recording responses to this spam (although this version is from "Tony" not "Michael.") It& #39;s a bunch of people saying "who is this" and "my house is on fire??" And, insanely, some of them are from people whose houses actually ARE on fire!
Here& #39;s one: "Tony, thanks for reaching out. Fortunately only my attached workshop was damaged, as well as some fencing. I really lucked out and feeling very grateful."
I guess if you text enough people that their house is on fire, you& #39;ll eventually be right. It& #39;s like that famous thought experiment about monkeys trying to type Shakespeare and then using the Shakespeare to harvest cell phone data for nefarious online business.
I don& #39;t know how phone scams work. If this is the only search result for this string of words, is it fair to assume these people are responsible for spamming me? I poked around the website that& #39;s hosting this text file: http://sickcompany.com"> http://sickcompany.com
Here& #39;s what they say their business does. Note that "not for profit" is in quotes!! Why would a charity for companies who are distressed due to COVID-19 be sending out spam texts about housefires?
Interestingly, the file says the spam texts started on January 3, 2020, well before most businesses would have been affected by COVID-19. So the spam PROBABLY isn& #39;t in service of the "not for profit," right?
There& #39;s also a "Sponsors and Supporters" section, which lists exactly one sponsor and/or supporter: @toastpr. ToastPR, as a British PR agency, why are you sponsoring this "not for profit" that& #39;s sending out creepy spam to people in the US?
There& #39;s also an "About Us" page. The company is owned by two guys: Rye Akervik and Ben Way. According to Wikipedia, Way "works with Mayor Bloomberg& #39;s Partnership for a New American Economy and the White House." THE END.
. @bway is your company spamming people about housefires?
