Be careful with those scammers and Google Voice
HEY! IT'S MY 100th post! Woo hoo!
It's not that difficult to sniff those troublemakers out, but sometimes you get led down a path before you realize, after 20 messages, they're not legit.
I had a pretty devastating experience lately I thought I'd share to help my bros out. Here's what happened:
I have a thing for big hair, saw a really hot girl and started messaging about things, letting her know her hair was amazing, etc. She claimed to have 1 kid in her profile, but she looked too hot. The conversation quickly moved to text, my Google Voice account. She immediately wanted to send me "spicy" photos to make things interesting on Telegram. I met her there, and of course, I immediately refused to pay for any images. She made it seem like a way to help her, as she's between jobs and has a daughter to support. So I told her to meet me instead, sensing she wasn't local anyway, but probably in Nigeria or Philadelphia, watching the Eagles. She then wanted $200 up front to hire a full-day babysitter. I'd seen that one before as well. Again, I refused, fully convinced I was talking to a sweaty overweight Canadian teenager. This is where things began to get tricky. They (no longer "SHE") persisted in wanting something from me. I challenged her authenticity and asked her to hold up a card with "I (heart emoji) (my user name)" next to her face. She got really upset, asking why I would ask her to tell me she loves me, which in hindsight, I won't do again, but just ask for the date. Point was, she wouldn't do that, either. I explained why they were a scammer, a waste of my time, etc. And blocked her. On both the site and in Telegram. Note to self, never move to more than one platform. They're data harvesting anyway.
Deep breath.
Within minutes, my beloved Google Voice account was deactivated. I got an email explaining I violated their terms and use policy. A link was provided to appeal, along with details about what all that meant. I of course appealed, but it didn't matter. They immediately denied. My first thought was, "OH SHIT! All of the other messages to girls I've arranged PPMs with, etc. Were visible to them. They probably got a complaint initially from this scammer that I was bullying them, which is one of the usage violations. But on appeal, if they looked at my other 60-70 contacts, they'd have seen all kinds of stuff involving you know what.
I was able to keep all my contacts, as they only disabled GV in my Firefox browser (don't ask. It's easy to discard the profile with minimal efforts), but I couldn't create a new GV account with that email, nor could I create one in Firefox with any other Google username. The more I investigated it, the scarier it became to me. I was playing with fire, trying to create a new account in Chrome as well. Was it my MAC address, IP address? Who knows. Google search didn't help.
HERE'S THE CONSEQUENCES YOU NEED TO KNOW: if you get pissed at a scammer, and this happens to you, you could lose access to all Google services across their entire platform. Think about how difficult that might make your life if you use it for civilized behavior. I was fortunate I didn't lose everything. I use VPN, but it didn't matter.
Stay safe, gents. This is an amazing hobby, and I've reaped so much gold from it, but losing all of the conversations I had going on was incredibly challenging to recover from. Most of the ladies in progress abandoned me when I attempted to reach back out from a new number, assuming I was a scammer. The loss was huge at the time (about a month ago), but I have 35 POTs going on again, so I'm good.
I switched to TextNow, which is adequate, but I'm waiting for a good eSIM to use with them, once they release them. The ads are annoying. There's probably some obvious reactions to have, but I would just say "Be careful with those scammers. Just dump them and move on, don't get into it, and don't make it something for them to become vengeful about. ".
Google Voice versus Burner Phones
One more vote for right there for a burner phone.
I conduct a lot of business over Google services and the loss of my Google accounts would cause serious mayhem for me. That's why I buy a new prepaid phone at Wal-mart or Target every year or so.