How Do Scammers Get Your Phone Number?

Описание: How do scammers get your phone number? They make it, they buy it, or they steal it — and one of those has definitely already happened to yours.

This is the whole machine, opened up: the autodialers that simply guess every possible number, the "live flag" that marks you the moment you answer, the sucker lists where engaged numbers sell at a premium, the data brokers selling numbers for as little as five cents, the mega-breaches, and the five rules that actually make your number worthless to scammers.

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 The Toll Text You Just Got
0:39 $15.9 Billion Lost (FTC, 2025)
1:12 Method 1: They MAKE Your Number
1:56 The "Live Flag" & Sucker Lists
2:39 Method 2: They BUY It (5 Cents)
3:19 Method 3: They STEAL It (Breaches)
3:56 Method 4: They SCRAPE It
4:31 The 5 Rules That Actually Work
5:42 You Were Never "Chosen"

🎨 Hand-doodled in MS Paint.

📌 Educational consumer-protection explainer. Sources: FTC Consumer Sentinel 2025 data &
May 2026 imposter-scam alert (consumer.ftc.gov), FCC robocall guidance, YouMail Robocall
Index, public list-broker pricing. Report spam texts free by forwarding to 7726. No
realistic phone numbers are shown. Stay safe — when in doubt, don't answer, don't press,
don't tap.

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