HAHAHAHa! Hahahaha

Sorry you are skeeved, that is gross, but puppy? That's hilarious.
Maybe you should write back and shame him for his texting abilities and scare him a little.

Something like "My puppy has fleas and you are a joke. I just cc'ed the cops."

"The last time my puppy got had a cock he chewed it to pieces. Sorry!"

Oh, and I don't think it was an honest mistake. I am pretty sure that when people send these sort of messages, they send them to someone established in their phone book and don't just dial in the number. He's probably doing it to get a rise out of you and see if you call or text back something shocked. I think it's best to play it cool but mocking if you do write back.

But the more I think about it, the less I think you should write back in case he then tries to call you or escalates this by having your phone number and knowing you are responsive.

I vote delete and move on. And/or posting the number it came from publicly.

"got had"? I can haz grammar!

What is your service provider? Perhaps they can establish who it came from and perhaps block the number. I had a hang-up caller several times nightly for a month or so and ATT investigated. In my case, I just had the number changed for free and I wasn't charged for any of the investigation services.

So, look into that and don't respond. Do Not Respond. Also, you can look up the number on the net. Perhaps it is someone you know.

Where the hell is Olena when we need her?

At least he didn't want to touch your puppy!

Do not respond, but do not delete in case it escalates and you need documentation.

Sounds like an honest stuff-up to me. I once sent a personal, mock-abusive message ("yeah, we all hate you too"), to someone who had decided not to follow us all to the third or fourth pub of the evening, only to find I'd mistyped the phone number. I was mortified.

Somewhat related:

A while back, during the .com boom, there were tons of websites offering free web to sms gateways. This being the web, there's also a fair bit of text pron* about. So I combined the two and sent a good mate a huge barrage of text messages, being someone's whole penthouse-forum-esque fantasy 255 characters at a time, with ctrl-c alt-tab ctrl-v alt-tab.

I thought it'd be annoying, but amusing. He was actually gutted when I got bored and stopped. Odd man that.


* is it pron if it's text? pornolit, rather than pornography? but 'graph' is writing too, right? I'll leave this one to the philosophers.

pompomtom: The word Pornography used to literally mean "writing about prostitutes".

Don't respond.

I was just reading Gavin de Becker's The Gift of Fear, and basically what a lot of creeps want is just to get a rise out of someone as a way of continuing interaction. Responding just feeds the meter, so to speak.

A rule of thumb GdB has is six weeks of non-interaction. Very few of his clients have actually gone that long without responding when they come to him.

Don't respond even if he repeats the exercise or cajoles you to go along with the excuse that he was just joking. Don't call the police yet, though, but do so immediately if he ever suggests you are obligated to him or if he mentions violence even obliquely.

Thanks, all- I posted here then went straight to bed as it was 1am. I've no indication he knows who I am, so am not too worried. I won't reply, tempting though it is to mock his poor texting skillz.

Heh, I used to get messages like that from some poor girl - always at some ungodly hour of the morning. To start with, I responded in kind with a few, but then the Mrs and I got sick of being woken up, so we broke up with her.