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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'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
The text file seems to be recording responses to this spam (although this version is from "Tony" not "Michael.") It'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'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'll eventually be right. It'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'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's hosting this text file: http://sickcompany.com
Here'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't in service of the "not for profit," right?
There'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's sending out creepy spam to people in the US?
There'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's Partnership for a New American Economy and the White House." THE END.
. @bway is your company spamming people about housefires?
