Someone just harassed me via text. Can I find out who sent it?

April 8, 2020 6:25 AM

I just received a weird string of insults via text. The sender used specifics that make me think they know (or knew) me personally. (Damn, dude. This is a first.) I looked up the number on Whitepages, Spokeo, and Intelius. Not much info, except the carrier is listed as Onvoy. It looks like (?) that's a service that lets you text over the Internet. Is there anything I can do to find out who sent these messages? I didn't respond because Gift of Fear, but I'm reluctant to block in case they escalate. Thanks for any ideas or expertise you have to share!
posted by anonymous to Technology (3 answers total)

Block and move on. No good will come from any other action.
posted by El_Marto at 6:27 AM on April 8, 2020 [17 favorites]

I was going to suggest you see if Onvoy has a harassment or TOS policy that you could contact them to enforce, but some googling suggests that Onvoy is a shady service mainly used by scammers/robocalls, so I agree that blocking and moving on is the thing to do here.
posted by Ragged Richard at 8:08 AM on April 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

Might be instructive to wait a bit and see whether you notice a decided uptick in ads for enhanced online security services as you go about your daily business on the web.

At minimum, that would give you some candidates for the ultimate source of this and could make it seem less personal.
posted by jamjam at 12:06 PM on April 8, 2020