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In 2020, my friend, let’s call him Liam, sent a message to the group chat. “It’s relentless,” he said, with a screenshot of a message from a woman saying “Still single?”
Liam didn’t complain about the exhaustion of being wanted. This was the same person she had captured in our chat the week before, when she was using the phrase “How’s lockdown treating you?” – A fairly peaceful small talk, given that she had begun her correspondence with an unsolicited nude.
My colleague, who is a Labor staffer, appeared in reports earlier this month on the Westminster bee catcher, where it was revealed that UK politicians and parliamentary staff had been the target of a phishing attack. The WhatsApper, who called himself Charlie or Abi, would pretend to know the person and the exchanges would become sexual. Reports mainly focused on attempts that occurred between October 2023 and February of this year, but the story has older roots. I should know, since I messaged “Abi” while she was still calling herself “Abbie” in 2020.
I will say that this was not an entirely unusual situation for Liam. The same group chat tried to decode a voicemail it received in which two women were laughing on the phone while trying to spit out a strange word. But there was something about these particular messages that clearly made them false. “I just don’t understand what the ending is,” Liam complained, and it was true, it seemed strange. The WhatsApper didn’t want money, they weren’t trying to get his information, they just wanted to flirt.
Although we agreed that it could be a unique experience dating a robot, he proceeded to ignore her. But it seemed worth a try, given the inexplicability of it all. That’s why I added the honey hunter’s number to my contacts. “What’s the worst that can happen?” I asked. (The answer to that question is: four years later, screenshots of my WhatsApps sent to the police.)
I decided to make a mistake of identity. If Abbie were real, there would be some kind of human response, even if it was simply, “Sorry honey, wrong number.”
HeyI wrote, not anticipating that one day I might be reiterating my messages in a newspaper column.
Who is thisAbbie responded a minute later.
Your sister, idiot, I answered. (I state in my defense that I was trying to establish a familiar tone.)
That? She wasn’t having any of that. No, you are notshe wrote. Who.
It took him three minutes to say he was blocking me, six for our back-and-forth to end. I broadcast my interaction to the chat. The speed with which he mistrusted and blocked me seemed to indicate the defensiveness of someone whose phone was only for initiating exchanges.
But the stoy did not end there. Last year, she showed up on Liam’s phone again. She was a different number and her name was now spelled “Abi.” She knew about the election campaign he had been on the previous day, which she had not shared publicly, and she cited old work of his and used his name again. “Long time no talk,” she texted. “Liam, right?”
When he responded, unsure of her identity, she explained how they met, before objecting: “I’ll be offended, but I won’t be surprised, if you don’t remember me.”
The tone was human, the backstory legitimate, the facts correct. She seemed sweet, shy and interested. We discussed it, but my partner remained firm: he did not agree to any meeting. He stopped responding. But what if had Did it sound familiar to you? Or if he had allowed himself to believe that was the case. . .
It’s easy to look at scams from a position of knowledge and wonder how someone could fall for them. But isn’t communication driven by imagination? We read in tones, intentions, subtexts; when virtual, we also invoke the voice or facial expressions of the sender. So many things are conspired. It reminds me of a successful scam from last year: a text message arrives from an unknown number (“Hi Mom”) before the sender explains that his phone is lost or broken and that he needs money. In the first half of 2023, victims lost more than £460,000. The scam took advantage of an instinct: My son needs help, I must act quickly.. Later, the victim might reflect and think: Shouldn’t I have checked that it was them? But these scams are based on instinctive responses, where the victim acts based on a fear or desire.
I’m glad my friend wasn’t fooled by the honey hunter, that those messages were just group conversation material. To him, it’s just a fun story. In 2020, his intuition kicked in: “There must be some guy with a laptop somewhere,” he speculated. But what did that person want? Well, that’s the mystery we’re still unraveling in the group chat.
Rebecca Watson is the Financial Times’ assistant arts and books editor. Faber will publish her second novel ‘I Will Crash’ in July
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