SMS spam or more ?

westernlad4x

Last night I got an SMS from a person who I know (parent of my kid)
saying
"Let's video chat and text on imo! Get the free app (url)"

where url was the shortned URL to get the app.

2 questions.

One - is anyone familiar with this app ? I downloaded and it asked for me to agree to share my contacts.
Does it send out SMS to all your contacts ???
Seems like that would cost a bit and also a bit cringeworthy.

otherwise maybe it has some way of individually inviting people.
in which case I am slightly creeped by the invite

Feel free to re-assign boards.ie forum for this question if this forum is not the most appropriate.

power pants

More than likely the person downloaded the app and when asked to share app with contacts he pressed ok and the automatic message sent to all his contacts in the phone

Tokyo

^^This.

It reads very much like an automated response, and more than likely he clicked 'OK' to a bunch of terms and conditions while installing the app, one of which was to share invites with people on his contact list. I wouldn't be concerned about it.

sashafierce

This post has been deleted.

Big Bag of Chips

What "more" do you think it might be? It sounds like they installed an app and clicked "invite contacts". It's a very generic message. Nothing personal in it to say it was specifically sent to you.

There's various apps that you can send text, voice and video messages through. Is your child old enough to be able to watch a video message? Maybe they want you to set it up so that they can send messages to their child?

westernlad4x

Actually I installed the app myself to check.
It has an invite friends from contacts button which allows invites via SMS but you have to individually select friends to invite.

My daughter has the mum's contact on her phone and got no invitation text.
I haven't checked with my wife yet to see if she got one.
We'd have her on our lists for kids parties , sleepovers, etc.

The message is pre-composed by the app but the user has to (as far as I can see) deliberately individually select a contact to invite along to install the app.
She could have scrolled through list of contacts and accidentally pressed share for me, who knows ?

LegacyUser

westernlad4x wrote: »

who knows ?

Who knows? The person who sent the text, either text them and ask them if they are aware they sent it or delete it and forget about it. Can't belive you'd download and install some random app without checking first.

Big Bag of Chips

You seem to be convinced there is some hidden meaning, or ulterior motive to this. Have you reason to suspect that she might be trying to start something between you? Or cause trouble for you?

You just seem to be hugely over thinking something that on the face of it seems harmless. Why not ask her, or ignore it as mentioned above?

westernlad4x

This turned out to be nothing.

My wife also got an invite so this was all very innocent.

So, I reckon the person in question chose a list of people who she felt were close enough to share the app invite with.
I was mostly just thinking aloud and not getting panicky or anything.
Of course, if I was the only one in the household to get an invite I might have found it a little embarrassing, that's all.
Even, in that it there is always possibilities of a small kid playing with the smartphone and accidentally pressing buttons, etc.

m'lady

I just think with smart phone apps and also social networking sites that your information is 'free for all', in this case your phone number!