Teen (16-17) friends using smartphone. Photo: Adam Hester (Getty).
Phone pranks aren’t as easy as they used to be back before cell phones and caller ID. But as times change, our prank strategies must also adapt and evolve. I’m sure you’ve seen plenty of “wrong number” style pranks that are all fine and good, but this is going to take your text prank game to a whole new level. The best thing is, you can do it to anyone at any time and there’s nothing they can do about it. Have fun!
So you may not have noticed this, but when you create a group text, you can go into the details and give a name to your chat. What’s interesting about this is that, whatever you choose is going to show up on their phone as the contact name. They don’t get an alert for a name change either. So when a text comes through to the group, they’ll only see the name you chose.
Now most people will just put a practical name like “Beach Trip Crew 2016” or something, but the trick is to change the name of the group to a contact name that’s definitely in the recipient’s phone book. For example, odds are your friends have a contact in their phone named Mom. So, for this prank, let’s name the group text Mom.
Again, they won’t get a notification of the group name change, so this works really well if you have an old group chat that hasn’t been active for a few days. Now all you have to do is send an unusual or shocking text that would be especially strange coming from the name you chose. Like this:
OK, this might be a bit much, but you get the idea. Once you send it, here’s how it’s going to show up in their list of text message conversations:
More than likely they won’t be paying attention to the multiple contact circles on the left, and will only be looking at that text from their “Mom” they just received. Remember, prank responsibly, but get a little wild with it, you know?
