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Threatening text messages on my cell phone, 120 in one day, but no phone number for the sender, how do I get this info? I think they were sent via home pc. What type of wording, code, etc. should I look for in the "details" about the message in order to possibly figure out who sent them or where they came from?

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  • If the texts are indeed threatening, contacting authorities is the first thing you should do
    – niilzon
    Jul 1, 2016 at 11:43
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    I would recommend you to contact the police. Depending on the quality of law enforcement where you live it might be more or less fruitfull, but this kind of harassment is probably illegal everywhere.
    – Anders
    Jul 1, 2016 at 12:33
  • Why do you assume that you can figure out who sent them? Perhaps an anonymous SMS service was used. SMS is insecure and can be spoofed.
    – Neil Smithline
    Jul 1, 2016 at 15:25

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Sadly it will be very hard to track down the sender.

The only way to track down a sender without a senders id to go through your carrier. For them the procedure is also hard as they would have to do the following:

Track the message -> Track all hops it went through until it got to you -> Contact the senders service provider and ask for information (Only works with a court order [Unless the sender uses the same service provider])

Since all this will probably not happen unless theere is a court order I suggest you contact authorities and work with them on stopping the sender.

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  • I did but they seem less than eager to help. They asked me to leave my phone and they would try to ping it? What is that and how is it done? My carrier said they can't do anything without a court order, of course.
    – anealgilbert
    Jul 1, 2016 at 11:59
  • I am not sure what they referring to when they said they would try to "ping" it but i can assume they think they can track down the sender by sending him a crafted packet (Maybe they have an ability we don't know about?)
    – Bubble Hacker
    Jul 1, 2016 at 12:10
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To give your question a concrete answer, you can not get this info alone. As others already told you, contact the authorities because this is a crime. This relies on them.

The chances of success in such cases are not high because:

  • authorities receive such reports every day.
  • the sender probably prepared himself to avoid detection
  • even if they trace him, he still could use some mobile device that he could simply drop, he could use public locations, etc. So even if he gets caught, the evidence is probably gone.

But don't be pessimistic, those were just a possibilities. It all depends on the case.

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