Pretexting: Social Engineering “Success” Story

I <3 Social Engineering! Here’s my story about how easy it can be to get contact information.

So about 3 months ago, I was on the bus going home from school. I ended up getting a text message from an unknown number that was in my area code. It read the following,”Hey man, the people texted me asking about the walls. They are so annoying, lol. I told them we still have some people working on it!” It was clear to me that he had the wrong number and thought that I was his boss
or something along those lines. So I thought,”Why not play this out; this is going to be fun!” So I texted him back: “lol, can you forward their number to me, in case I need to text them?”

He replied shortly after,”sure” and sent the information:
Jacob [ last name ] (000) 000-0000 j******@gmail.com
Linda [ last name ] (000) 000-0000 l********@yahoo.com
Mike  [ last name ] (000) 000-0000 m******@gmail.com

I responded,”thanks, do you have any photos of the wall currently?”

At this point, I think he got a little suspicious because it may have seemed like I was asking for so much information. He sent the photo of the wall (it was a blue dry wall with holes in it) and after that, he called me. So I had to think quickly on this part, I started walking around my house quickly as if I was out somewhere in a rush. When I answered the call I kept the phone about a foot and a half way from my head so the sound would seem like a bad connection. I then said,”~hey man!,” he replied,”Yah, Dave where were you today?,” I said,”~what?”
[ I kept saying “what” to potentially just get him to go back to texting ]

Then I said,”~hold on, text me!” and hung up.
(Ok so apparently I am Dave)

He did text me back,”Where have you been?” So I wrote,”Currently I am out shopping, why do you ask?” [ Down stream from here ]

He said,”You told me that you were going up state to visit some family!”
(I gave up here, he got me)

So I wrote,”You got the wrong number”
He replied,”WOW!… Bored much?”

I said,”Nah, I just wanted to see how far I could get.”

He seemed pretty unhappy about that, but probably thought it was funny.
So this was just a small experience with pretexting, nothing major but fun none the less!

Let me know if you have ever done anything like this before!

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