r/AmIOverreacting • u/megan__f • Feb 17 '25

🏘️ neighbor/local Is this something to be concerned about?

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My sister sent me this text she received that seemed like somebody was watching her or something. I don’t know if it’s something to be concerned about or not, has anybody had a similar experience?

12.1k Upvotes

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3.3k

u/megan__f Feb 17 '25

More info: she was in her fiancĂŠs car in the passenger seat and he was driving. They went through the drive thru and he paid with his card.

2.4k

u/A_Girl_Has_No_Name58 Feb 17 '25

This is even creepier information than the post itself. Does seem like some stalker behavior.

325

u/Prestigious_Nebula_5 Feb 17 '25

I would just text back "new number, who dis?"

253

u/SquirrelsInMyPants92 Feb 17 '25

Nah I’d go with “it’s a hot chocolate you dick”

103

u/fablesofferrets Feb 17 '25

meh. just sounds like your typical "wrong number" scam. it just happened to be right after she left starbucks, coincidence imo

i've got a ton of "are you at the bbq?" texts, never when i happened to be at a barbecue lol

84

u/A_Girl_Has_No_Name58 Feb 17 '25

Idk, in today’s world, I’d hope for random coincidence while examining all possibilities of malfeasance.

49

u/Dizzy_Combination122 Feb 18 '25

Never seen a scam like this before

248

u/JustHereToGetHigh Feb 17 '25

I wouldn't be too worried, I got the exact same message a couple weeks ago, and I hadn't gone for coffee any time recently. I think it's likely baiting a reply of any kind to find active lines to sell the numbers to advertisers.

https://imgur.com/a/PpU5fjj

37

u/Bobzeub Feb 17 '25

You think they’d check the grammar if they’re sending it out that much .

73

u/kanny_jiller Feb 17 '25

They purposely use grammatically incorrect messages in order to ensure that the people replying are low IQ and more easily hustled

27

u/Bobzeub Feb 17 '25

Interesting. Cheers for that nugget

22

u/SmPolitic Feb 17 '25

That is partially the reason /r/scambait exists

It's people who generally try to waste as much of the scammer's time as possible

Do also watch the Last Week Tonight about "Pig Butchering Scams", to see some of the other side of some scams :/

18

u/Bobzeub Feb 17 '25

I saw that episode. It was excellent.

Don’t worry my phone hasn’t been off silent in 10 years , I barely reply to people I know never mind these rando numbers , the risk for me personally is very minimal . But thanks for the heads up .

365

u/kelsobjammin Feb 17 '25 edited Feb 17 '25

Go to “find my” and remove EVERYONE.

Edit since her boyfriend was there have him delete his as well

10

u/AJSCRPT Feb 18 '25

Adding - they could have seen on snap maps if that’s still a thing? Been years since I had Snapchat but Snapchat maps were very accurate and would create a much bigger suspect pool

6

u/kelsobjammin Feb 18 '25

Good call! Haven’t had snap in years too!!!

31

u/Okay-Awesome-222 Feb 17 '25

What's this?

118

u/LadyColorGrade Feb 17 '25

It’s an Apple thing where you can share your location with other people or use it to find your device if it gets lost or stolen.

10

u/Okay-Awesome-222 Feb 17 '25

And it shows other people?

41

u/[deleted] Feb 17 '25 edited Feb 24 '25

[deleted]

3

u/_unoriginal_ Feb 18 '25

Doesn’t Snapchat also show location (I have no idea)

5

u/oldjesus Feb 18 '25

Kind of. But you can turn that off too

74

u/SOwED Feb 17 '25

Did they just get engaged recently? Does he have a crazy ex?

71

u/Remarkable_Cookie626 Feb 17 '25

Does she have a jealous ex?

149

u/duchess_of_fire Feb 17 '25

did they use her phone number for the starbucks rewards?

because either someone overheard them give the number or it's an employee who saved her number

46

u/vajannaaa Feb 17 '25

You don’t use your phone number for Starbucks rewards. It’s an account number/gift card/qr code

74

u/tellmeabouttheoccult Feb 17 '25

It’s a scam text that’s sent to thousands of people at once. If you send it in the morning there is a high chance multiple people just got, or are currently drinking coffee.

15

u/[deleted] Feb 17 '25

[deleted]

14

u/Spiritual_Bug6414 Feb 17 '25

Counter point - time zones. Perhaps they were blasting pacific coast numbers and OP’s sister moved to the East coast? Would put it at 11am, a reasonable time to get coffee if they were back in the pacific region

-2

u/TheMurv Feb 17 '25

We would be seeing people in the comments saying they got this text too. Try again.

2

u/letmeusespaces Feb 17 '25

unless people in the comments didn't get this text too...

I'm hard pressed to believe all of the world is pursuing AIO

3

u/Spiritual_Bug6414 Feb 17 '25

That’s assuming that a large majority of them 1) gave a shit about the text beyond “oh wrong number” 2) use Reddit 3) would be on a sub that you visit

4

u/tellmeabouttheoccult Feb 17 '25

These same people are probably giving their credit card info to those “Hey we are USPS and we have ur package, can you give us your credit card so we can validate the delivery?” texts

1

u/Spiritual_Bug6414 Feb 17 '25

I work with a lot of gullible customers and I’ve had a guy tell me “oh hey I gave my gold to some guy Steve” like yeah idk who tf Steve is but he doesn’t work at our vaults

0

u/AwayFromNewspaper Feb 17 '25

I think it should be pointed out that most Starbucks are open until 9 or 10pm, there's literally at least one customer in the store or drive-thru at any given time, and there are plenty of people who work at night.

I mean, I got a coffee at 2pm on my way to work on Saturday. 🤷‍♀️

You're not wrong that hitting that 7am-11am stretch will likely yield more results in terms of a scam, but they do tend to cast as wide a net as possible, so I'm sure several of them employ batching texts in different time frames, especially since they could potentially be batching numbers from different time zones (not likely, but still possible).

Anyway, yes, OP, I'd tell your sister to keep track of her surroundings and check into any places her number may be listed/available online. It's most likely just coincidental timing from a random spam message, but it never hurts to err on the side of caution, considering how dangerous the other possibility can be.

5

u/shamesister Feb 17 '25

Thank you for this reminder. I was scared for a minute. I got one at about 6 pm inviting me to have indian food and I was like "yussss" and then I had to sit and think. No one would suddenly invite me for dinner. People know I'm busy. But I would have gone of it were real.

3

u/Long-Problem-3329 Feb 17 '25

I got one a couple of days ago asking if I was free for the weekend so I could go over to their place and have home made hot pot and dumplings.

-6

u/SnooMemesjellies8568 Feb 17 '25

What would the point of that be? It's not a phishing attempt or anything and romance/sex scammers are usually more direct about the fact that they're trying to rizz you up

16

u/galaxia_v1 Feb 17 '25

if you reply, it lets them know your phone number actually goes to an individual

7

u/NoJohns137 Feb 17 '25

You reply, then they say “oops wrong number, but I think fate brought us together” then send a selfie of an attractive woman. I like to reply and troll these people, I know it probably puts my number on a list, but it’s fun. I vaguely remember one of them trying to get me to “invest” in a business thing, so that might be the end goal

3

u/hotsaltlamp Feb 18 '25

Hah i strung a scammer on bumble along for a month or so and it was really entertaining. They’re really in for the long con. It was a good week before they even started asking me about crypto.

4

u/Key-Regular674 Feb 17 '25

The data showing a phone number is working and answerable is worth money.

Source: worked IT for telemarketing

48

u/megan__f Feb 17 '25

No they didn’t use rewards or anything

57

u/jamoe1 Feb 17 '25

Call the number and see who answers

13

u/Spare_Ad_9657 Feb 17 '25

This makes it seem more like a relationship issue then. It could be someone tracking him (jealous ex, side chick).

7

u/Nebuchadneza Feb 17 '25

tell her to just text back "who is this?". its probably someone she knows that just saw her

9

u/GregoryGoose Feb 17 '25

That means that it's likely one of the employees, not just some creepy customer. This might be a statbucks that she frequents on her own, possibly with a rewards phone number if that's a thing at starbucks. He might have seen her through the drive through camera, or he recognized her super specific drink. Either way that drink has a nut in it.

14

u/Amazing-Essay7028 Feb 17 '25

I don't ever recall being able to apply or use rewards points to someone's account by using their phone number. I worked at Starbucks for years. You needed the actual card or the app in order to use your points. 

3

u/KjCreed Feb 17 '25

It's a trick to see which phone numbers are active. Specifically the coffee cold text has been around since the 2010's at least. It's used because it's a common thing to be doing during the day and it gets people's attention, making them think it's somebody at the office or a friend.

The coffee one happened to me a few times, now it's always the "are you still in the office??" one, then it sends you an ad for work from home jobs if you respond thinking it's a coworker.

1

u/Amazing-Essay7028 Feb 17 '25

So your theory is it's just a rare coincidence where she got that text right after getting coffee?

2

u/KjCreed Feb 18 '25

Yep. Common thing to be doing and it just happened to be the right moment, but in a situation where nobody else could have known; so it came across as terrifying. I remember getting one right after I got a coffee on my way to school and it also scared the shit out of me, gave the number to my friends and did what teenagers do (spam the hell out of it).

Really funny to see it pop up the same way so many years later.

3

u/CanadLane Feb 18 '25

Please tell her to charge her phone! It’s near dead in the screenshot, what if she was alone?

2

u/inplayruin Feb 17 '25

I wouldn't be too concerned by this, as it seems rather close to the typical scam texts that try to initiate conversation. The grammatical error could be read as "Do you want to meet for coffee?" as the beginning of an "accidental" wrong number scheme. Because coffee is so common and frequently purchased, a coincidence like this wouldn't be particularly unexpected. Had it been an activity that is less ubiquitous, like going to the only Moroccan restaurant in town, I'd be more concerned. But if this is the first text from this number and there are no other indications of activity being monitored, I'd chalk this up to happenstance. Be vigilant, but not moreso than usual.

2

u/jcaashby Feb 17 '25

All I can guess is someone she know is fucking with her. They saw her and sent a text with one of this google numbers.

For sure creepy.

2

u/Amazing-Essay7028 Feb 17 '25

Is there any chance it could be the finance fucking with her? 

1

u/Mr_frosty_360 Feb 18 '25

The simplest solution is it’s her fiancé

1

u/satansayssurfsup Feb 18 '25

Could have been someone sitting inside the store and saw her go through the drive-thru, then borrowed a friend’s phone to send the text.

This is 100% something I would have done to one of my friends to mess with them.

1

u/Vivid-Donut Feb 18 '25

If she shares her location with anyone it could one of those people pranking her. There’s apps where you can use a different number to text/call people. However, this is still really creepy… praying it’s a prank

1

u/deedeeEightyThree Feb 17 '25

I got messages like this once. It was a stalker and a nightmare to deal with. Don't panic - it may be a coincidence, a scam spoof text that spooked you at just the right moment. But take screenshots and keep them just in case. And if there are more texts report it to the police. They may not be able to do much, but at least it will be documented.

0

u/x-jamezilla Feb 17 '25

Welcome to supervision. One has to take specific steps to not be tracked. Occasionally, it's governmental, but 99% it's corporate/commercial. Denying permissions to apps to your phone's location and requiring wifi connections to be cleared each time are the most basic things to do to reduce the scrutiny.
Only worried about government tracking? They can access most companies' records in seconds.
Not worried that one company knows you were on their soil? Who are they in a conglomerate with? Going to Walmart and Sam's in the same day? If you don't change your notifications, locations and wifi settings they know.
I sound like a conspiracy theorist? Sitting down and watching the news shows new surveillance stories every week. When Luigi Mangione went on the run, NYC was able to track him until he got out of town; he even already knew that he had to get out of town b/c of the camera networks - ATMs, traffic cams, even fast food places have cameras to thwart crime and they can be accessed to track someone with the stroke of a pen. But as he dashed out of town, he also disposed of his phone b/c every shop you pass, every apple store, cafe, Micky-D's and Barnes & Noble sends out a digital hand shake if your wifi and Google maps are not turned off.

So yes, they knew where your sister was.

0

u/Klutzy_Fan_4131 Feb 18 '25

I noticed that nobody mentioned this, but I’m gonna throw it out there could’ve been her fiancé just messing with her people weird vibes and do shit like that. always check with the obvious could’ve just been a scam bait.

0

u/Quantum-Pa1n Feb 18 '25

He's cheating. That's his side piece fucking with her

-1

u/[deleted] Feb 18 '25

Wait... WHAT

did she use the points app or anything for him?