Who Actually Buys Stocks Based On Strangers Text Messaging Them?

from the and-can-we-take-away-their-mobile-phones? dept

Federal regulators are apparently so concerned about pump-and-dump spammers moving to text messages, that they’ve sent out a warning telling people that if you receive a text message from a complete stranger with a stock tip… it’s probably not legit. This should bring up one huge question: who actually needed the SEC to tell them this? Are there really people who believe that a random text message spam on their mobile phone is actually providing them with a hot stock tip?


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Comments on “Who Actually Buys Stocks Based On Strangers Text Messaging Them?”

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16 Comments
OffBeatMammal (profile) says:

the same morons...

…. why buy stuff from junk faxes or (worse) junk emails …. and just encourage the pond life who send them the keep sending them.

I report 100% of spam via Spamcop.net. Every PayPal, eBay, bank or Amazon phishing attempt I get I take the time to report through the MSN Toolbar anti-phishing bolt-on… but still the tide of crap keeps flowing.

Where there is an idiot, there’s someone going to take advantage of them. And it seems no amount of education or publicity will out-weight peoples greed and gullibility.

MauveMan (user link) says:

Re: the same morons...

These are largely the same morons who forward emails about little girls dying of cancer who just want a few more emails to be forwarded in their name so they can die happy…

I tend not to be all that gentle to people who send these things to me – even though I usually know them.

I usually send them a link to Snopes, a comment that verifying such a thing is a simple google search away, and didn’t they think it was *just a smidgen* odd?

Marcus Aurelius (user link) says:

Re: the same morons...

You should try
http://www.cloudmark.comhttp://www.cloudmark.com/desktop/
It’s an awesome little program by a company I thought of applying to out in Silicon Valley. They’re a small batch of smart entrepreneurs who came up with a viral solution for stopping spam. You join their community and get an Ebay-like rating based on the number of actual spams correctly blocked and every non-spam correctly unblocked. A high rating gives each user a higher weighting in their future determinations of an email being or not. It gives no weight to people who report everything incorrectly as spam. That means that as soon as a handful of people report something as spam, those emails never hit the rest of us. Spam email signatures get blocked in minutes once the number of users hits a certain number of thousands, which was hit at least a year ago.
Give the 15-day trial a try. You install in minutes, see one or two pop-ups about how it works when you next open Outlook, and then you see a new folder called “Spam” fill up with new emails that you never have to read (unless Norton pops-up annoyingly that a virus email has been quarantined). Hardly any spam, and when you do your job to block or unblock, you help the process, and you get recognized with a higher rating. Gold star. Pat on the back. The people that buy or click on spam links should lined up and kicked in the balls. Don’t even know what I would do if I met a spam sender in person.

SRNissen says:

Re: stock tips

Well it could, yes, in the same fashion that everything in the world can affect stock prices; if there is even one person out there who believes in his stock-tip message of the day and purchases a lot of stock in Zipnorf inc, that’ll change the supply/demand and the other investors might be able to sell theirs for more.

They might even be able to sell theirs to the gullible fool who believed the spam. But in a realistic, thorough and measurable manner? No, I don’t believe it could affect the price like that, no.

googly_eyes says:

IIRC

I think the premise is that the message looks like it is meant for someone else – an oooops I sent hot stock info to your number by mistake kinda thing.

I agree, one would have to have the mental capacity of a box of rasin bran to act on such a “tip”, but you know, greed can be a powerfull ally, for the dark side too…

Amanda Rush (user link) says:

Re: Idiots And Spammers

I think the fact that they have to warn people about this kind of thing is telling.
Kind of like, we have a record number of idiots actually falling for this crap, so let’s put out a warning.
Anybody who spends their time fishing and cluttering up the ‘Net with spam ought to be shot, and anyone who falls for it ought to be forced to do hard labor.

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