What can one person do in the face of serious injustice, such as being a victim of theft? Some cool hero from a random ’80s action movie would definitely turn out to be a retired commando – and would go out for brutal revenge. But if our hero is an ordinary person, and it’s the early twenties today?
Well, the author of the story that we will tell you today,the user u/preflex, faced with the theft of their mobile phone, decided that if they could not take revenge on the thief, then at least making his life as difficult as possible was a nearly sacred thing. Okay, let’s get to the story itself.
A few days ago, the author of the post found out that their mobile phone was stolen
Image credits:HS You (not the actual photo)
The thief removed the SIM from the stolen device and put it in his own, which he used to sell illegal substances and stolen stuff
Image credits:u/preflex
Image credits:JoomlaDay Greece (not the actual photo)
The cops weren’t interested in these logs, so the author just decided to subscribe the thief and his friends to numerous spam newsletters
So, according to the Original Poster (OP), their phone was recently stolen, and since the author of the post lives quite far from their carrier’s local store, and the phone was the only source of internet in their house, it took several days to get in touch with them.
Meanwhile, the author discovered that the thief had taken their SIM from the stolen phone and inserted it into his own device to use to sell illegal substances and stolen property. Arriving at the carrier’s office, the author took all the necessary steps – they blocked both the stolen phone and the previous SIM. All this is quite reasonable, isn’t it?
If you were expecting something like exciting descriptions of shootouts, chases and epic catchphrases, you were definitely mistaken. All the author did was to sign up the thief’s phone contacts for SMS mailings and newsletters from the main political parties, as well as for numerous individual campaigns.
Anyone who knows how intrusive political spam can be understands perfectly well what a dirty trick the OP actually played on the criminals. In addition, in the author’s own words, they are now thinking about signing these guys up for a couple of religious mailing lists. In the end, if you are already on a slippery slope, be prepared for the possible consequences…
Image credits:Keira Burton (not the actual photo)
Despite the fact that smartphone and software manufacturers are developing more and more security tools year after year, the statistics on phone theft are still sadly impressive. For example,London police reportedthat in 2022, 90,864 phones were stolen in the city alone, which is approximately 250 devices per day. Or one stolen phone every six minutes!
Of course, a huge metropolis is completely different thing, but the theft of phones and data still remains at an alarming level, both in the UK and in the USA. However, the numbers on SMS spam are no less impressive. Thus,according to Robokiller data, in 2022, fraudsters sent an overwhelming 225.7 billion spam texts, a remarkable 157% increase from 2021’s then-record of 87.8 billion. In other words, the original poster, even if they cannot return the stolen device, in any case, chose quite a good option for petty revenge.
