Some random website knows which school i go to, this is the second time i have received this message

  • Otter@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    Sounds like a really spammy and annoying way to promote an app. I assume someone else who has your phone number signed up on their app and gave access to all their contacts. Then the app sends out spam texts to get you to sign up.

    Depending on where you are located, you might be able to report it. Otherwise just drop them a bad review, or name and shame them here

    edit, I assume it’s this: https://slickapp.co/

    • fastandcurious@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      The thing is there should be a big fucking warning screen when apps ask for contact permissions saying ‘You are sharing OVERLY sensitive and potentially DANGEROUS data’ and then have the screen wait until 15 sec before they can press OK

      But they are reserved for when i am using an adblocker

      • simple@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        If you have a normal social life it’s honestly expected that a couple of people will leak your phone number (and contact name). Nothing you can really do about it. Happened to me many times.

      • meseek #2982@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        That’s just a fundamental problem with security. You can vault up your home but give your idiot brother in law a key and find the back door wide open, him drunk on the kitchen floor.

        Prompts don’t work and aren’t really the right way to go because they are annoying and pretty cryptic as apps often assign a myriad of features to a single permission. Everyone’s just going to hit OK.

        It’s a difficult issue to solve because there are so many edge cases. And fundamentally you can’t really control what others do with your number.

        Honestly. I wish we started talking about doing away with phone numbers altogether. I feel tech is there. And it’s honestly such a massive fingerprint. I’ve had mine for 20 years ffs.

        • CoderKat@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Yeah. There’s literally nothing you can put on a prompt that will truly work. It’s still a good idea to prompt cause it will reduce how many people approve the prompt, but there is a significant number of people who don’t read prompts at all and just insta-confirm.

          At best, I think you could design it so there’s no way for an app to request certain permissions themselves. They’d have to be opted in from the system settings and apps could only tell you how to do it. But that’s a usability nightmare that is quite frustrating for legitimate usages. There’s already some super sensitive permissions that do this. I think the ability to install apps, ability to display over other apps, and password managers for android.

      • Ech@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        People still wouldn’t care. The value of privacy, for one’s self or others, has seriously cratered in the last few decades.

    • tanja@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      1 year ago

      Their website is slickapp.co (without the m at the end), but their Android package name is com.slickapp.

      Isn’t that a bit of an issue?
      For example, when handling URLs?

  • ClaireDeLuna@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    What happens is some kid gets a gossip app which takes their contact data and then uses it to send this shit.

    I used to get it pretty often too when I was in school.

  • Stalinwolf@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    This reminds me of the anonymous confession thing that made it’s rounds on Facebook several years back. My cousin would post links to his every day with messages like, “Let’s see what you’ve got” or “Give me your worst” attached to it. I suspect he was desperately fishing for compliments, or hoping for anonymous love confessions from the girls he was flirting with, as he would also post scrambled love letters on his wall that he must have figured these girls had time to sit down and eagerly unscramble (ie; I VELO UYO YLSHAE RMOE NTHA HTE UNS VELOS TEH ONOM). I always made sure to anonymously let him know what a stupid, annoying fuck he was being.

  • Death_Equity@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Google your name. There are a bunch of websites that will list your known addresses, affiliates(family or people you have lived with), phone numbers, social media, etc.

    That data is collected through various means and then are sold to interested parties.

    • taladar@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Generally information gathering from public sources like that is called OSINT in case someone wants to look up more details.

    • PsychedSy@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Google will monitor your deets in their search results and let you pull them, though I’m not sure how useful that is to most of the peeps in a privacy community.

  • miss_brainfart@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    They might not know know, but there sure can be a lot of meta data one can use to determine that a person goes to school, where it might be, and what school it most likely is.

    Or someone else straight up posted the information publicly. That’s always a possibility you have to consider.

    Either way, isolating certain websites and services from each other and/or the rest is certainly a good practice to limit what they can gather about you. If you don’t do that already, that is.

  • HubertManne@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    this is the primacy for social security and we are going to cancel your social security if you do not click this link and fill in the information for which is required.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    This is why it’s good to be middle-aged. If anyone I know was described as my ‘friend in _____ school’ without naming them, I’d just assume it was someone I don’t remember anyway.

  • random65837@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    What kind of phone do you have? Do you use social media? Do you use the same email address everywhere? They don’t know anything you didn’t willingly give out. It’s not a random website, it’s a website that bought you via your browsing practices.

    • CalicoJack@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 year ago

      This is most likely something that someone else gave out, not OP. Some old school “friend” signed up for some app and shared their phone contacts, app proceeds to spam those contacts hoping for more sign-ups.

      • random65837@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        The ol’ True Caller scam! Don’t forget all the people that add email addys to the phones contact list…and then give every app that asks for permissions full roam.

        But I’m “paranoid” because 90% of people only get my VoIP number and non important email.

        One an occupation or two when I know somebody really sucks I’ll give them a forwarder LOL.