Which phone # sent me a text msg?

[bob32 (Bob Cunningham)]

@Shamino

But it fails miserably if you’re grouping together numbers belonging to different entities - like one that aggregates every spammer that has tried to contact you. If you need to know which one sent you a message (perhaps to report them to law enforcement), that aggregate contact card will come back to bite you.

That would be true. Although I’d think trying to keeping track of spammers & scammers as if they were a single Contact might not be the best way …

Personally, I make a note of each scam (attempted fraud) and report it right away, while pretty much disregarding spammers (obvious junk advertising messages) … while promptly blocking them all. Which adds them to Blocked Contacts. Unfortunately those are not visible in the Contacts app, but the cumulative list of blocked phone numbers & email address can be viewed in Settings > [Mail or Messages or Phone or FaceTime] > Blocked Contacts. [All those apps share the same Blocked Contacts list.]

It’s my experience that scammers will try to connected with you repeatedly, commonly using different phone numbers and different email addresses each time. I know of no easy way to match the same scammer with all the different numbers they’re using.

Although scams with the same appearance can be a big clue. After his wife fell for the USPS scam, one of their text messages went to Grant Smith, who tracked the message back and broke into the scammers server. Wired magazine story here:

USPS Text Scammers Duped His Wife, So He Hacked Their Operation

Ah, Grant is a professional; most of us shouldn’t try anything like that. Note that the scammers tracked also everyone who visited any of their dummy web sites, regardless of whether the visitor entered anything.

[Shamino (David C.)]

@bob32

That would be true. Although I’d think trying to keeping track of spammers & scammers as if they were a single Contact might not be the best way …

FWIW, back when I thought spammers might actually reuse phone numbers, I did this. I had one contact card (called “F***ing spammer”) that would have all those numbers.

But in that case, I never cared which one sent any particular message. And I later deleted the contact after realizing that caller ID randomization makes it pointless.