You're overthinking it. It's almost always a foot in the door tactic to begin a conversation. The "mystery" of wondering why someone would text "who is this" to

You're overthinking it. It's almost always a foot in the door tactic to begin a conversation. The "mystery" of wondering why someone would text "who is this" to a random phone number is more disarming than "hey" or launching directly into the scam. Sure, it's not a very good strategy but since these messages are sent automatically at massive scale, it only has to be marginally better to be a worthwhile strategy.