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In 2020, my friend – let’s call him Liam – messaged the group chat. “It’s relentless,” he said, showing a screenshot of a message from a woman that read, “Still single?”
Liam didn’t complain about the exhaustion of being wanted. This was the same person he had screened in our chat the week before using the line “How is lockdown treating you?” – pretty tame small talk considering she had started her correspondence with an uninvited naked man.
My buddy – a Labor Party staffer – was featured in reports earlier this month about the Westminster Honeytrapper, which revealed that British politicians and parliamentary staff had been targeted in a phishing attack. The WhatsApper, who called himself Charlie or Abi, pretended to know the person and the exchange turned sexual. The reports focused primarily on trials between October 2023 and February of this year, but the story has longer roots. I should know because I wrote to “Abi” when she was still called “Abbie” in 2020.
I have to say that this wasn’t a completely unusual situation for Liam. In the same group chat, an attempt was made to decipher a voicemail in which two women were laughing on the phone and trying to spit out a word or two. But there was something about these particular messages that clearly made them seem fake. “Just don’t understand what the endgame is,” Liam grumbled, and it was true, it seemed strange. The WhatsApper didn’t want any money, he didn’t want to get his data, he just wanted to flirt.
Even though we agreed that dating a bot could be a unique experience, he ignored her. But given the inexplicability of it all, it seemed worth a try. That’s why I added the honeytrapper’s number to my contacts. “What’s the worst that could happen?” I asked. (The answer to this question is: four years later, screenshots of my WhatsApps are sent to the police.)
I decided to get involved with a case of mistaken identity. If Abbie were real, there would be some kind of human reaction – even if it was just, “Sorry baby, wrong number.”
HeyI typed, not anticipating that I might one day repeat my messages in a newspaper column.
who is thisAbbie replied a minute later.
Your sister, stupid, I have responded. (In my defense, I say I was trying to establish a familiar tone.)
What? She was having none of it. No that’s not youShe wrote. who is this.
It took her three minutes to say she was blocking me and six for our back and forth to end. I forwarded my interaction to chat. The speed with which she distrusted me and blocked me seemed to indicate the defensiveness of someone whose phone was used only to initiate an exchange.
But the story didn’t end there. Last year she reappeared on Liam’s phone. It was a different number and her name was now spelled “Abi.” She knew about the campaign he had participated in the day before – which he had not shared publicly – and quoted old work of his and used his name again. “Long time no talk,” she wrote. “Liam, right?”
When he replied, unsure of her identity, she explained how they met before demurring: “I would be offended but not surprised if you don’t remember me.”
The tone was human, the backstory legitimate, the facts correct. She sounded sweet, shy, interested. We discussed it, but my friend was adamant – it wasn’t a good match. He stopped answering. But what if it had sounded familiar? Or if he had allowed himself to believe it. . .
It’s easy to look at scams from a knowledge-based position and wonder how someone could fall for them. But isn’t communication driven by imagination? We read in tones, intentions, subtexts; When we are virtual, we also use the sender’s voice or facial expressions. There is so much magic going on. It reminds me of a successful scam from last year: A text message arrives from an unknown number – “Hi Mom,” before the sender explains that his phone is lost or broken and he needs money. In the first half of 2023, victims lost more than £460,000. The fraud was based on instinct: My child needs help, I have to act quickly. Later, the victim might think about it and think: Shouldn’t I have double-checked to see if it was them? But these scams rely on instinctive reactions, on the victim responding to a fear or desire.
I’m glad my friend wasn’t fooled by the honey trap that these messages were just fodder for group chats. To him it’s just a funny story. In 2020, his intuition kicked in: “It must be some guy with a laptop somewhere,” he speculated. But what did this person want? Well, that’s the mystery we’re still solving in the group chat.
Rebecca Watson is the FT’s deputy arts and books editor. Her second novel “I Will Crash” will be published by Faber in July
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