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
The author blocked both the SIM and the device by the IMEI but also got the logs of the thief's recent calls
Image credits: JoomlaDay Greece (not the actual photo)
Image credits: u/preflex
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?
But then, logging into their carrier's account, the original poster saw several logs of outgoing calls made by the thief - apparently, to his friends, acquaintances and accomplices. The victim offered these logs to the local police, but they were not interested. Then the OP decided that it was time to act on their own...
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 reported that 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.
Most of the people in the comments to the original post were simply delighted with the author's idea, offering them more and more new ideas for mailing lists to which the thief and his friends could be subscribed. Moreover, according to some commenters, while phone theft was, let's say, a one-time problem for the original poster, then various religious organizations will now persecute the hapless criminals for the rest of their lives.
As for other revenge options, some commenters strongly recommended military recruiters - who will also be happy to call them at any time of the day or night and tell them everything about all the advantages of military service... Well, let's wish the original poster good luck with a new phone, and their offenders a long and fruitless fight against spam on their own devices. And in case you have some of your own similar stories under your belt, please share them in the comments below.
Folks in the comments were nothing but delighted with this petty revenge option, and also came up with their own ideas for the hapless thief
