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> The formulation in the article may lead to a very bad advice: in some areas, scammers do display a "company name", regularly. So: a numeric sender string incr

> The formulation in the article may lead to a very bad advice: in some areas, scammers do display a "company name", regularly. So: a numeric sender string increases the chances of the SMS being a scam; an alphanumeric sender string /does not/ decrease the chances of the SMS being a scam. Just curious, which part of the text did you understand this way? If I would guess it could be with this part: > The number of the sender and that of the service provider they claim to be, do not match. Moreover, when you receive a message from bigger service providers, (f.e. banks, post offices, or delivery services) they will mostly have their company names displayed instead of their numbers. As I understand it, the article suggests that you still should compare the numbers even if only a name is displayed? But yeah your explanation is still on point.

mdp2021 4y ago
> which part of the text Well, there is a big image below, visually more impactive than the pasted paragraph, that goes "Messages from bigger services #do not# display their numbers". Yes, but neither do scammers. You are trying to discriminate legitimate entities L from impersonators L̅ through properties P, and especially define ways to identify L̅. You state that P(L), but that says nothing of L̅. And in fact, it is P(L̅) also - logical exhaustion. Logically the sentence works, because it implies "If messages display their numbers, they are not from bigger services". But in terms of effectiveness in communication, if put in the context of "how to recognize a scammer", the original may be misleading - because there (see the picture) you are focusing on the alphanumeric, not on the number, and the alphanumeric is not a criterion - the number is. The intention was to state "do not trust numbers". But in that context it is important to stress "do not trust alphanumericals either".

mdp2021 4y ago

> which part of the text Well, there is a big image below, visually more impactive than the pasted paragraph, that goes "Messages from bigger services #do not# display their numbers". Yes, but neither do scammers. You are trying to discriminate legitimate entities L from impersonators L̅ through properties P, and especially define ways to identify L̅. You state that P(L), but that says nothing of L̅. And in fact, it is P(L̅) also - logical exhaustion. Logically the sentence works, because it implies "If messages display their numbers, they are not from bigger services". But in terms of effectiveness in communication, if put in the context of "how to recognize a scammer", the original may be misleading - because there (see the picture) you are focusing on the alphanumeric, not on the number, and the alphanumeric is not a criterion - the number is. The intention was to state "do not trust numbers". But in that context it is important to stress "do not trust alphanumericals either".