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In August 2018, a warning started making its way around social media cautioning users to watch out for text messages containing the phrase a friend has complimented you in IRL, as these messages had allegedly been linked to sex trafficking: The claim that these text messages have been linked to sex trafficking is completely unsubstantiated. What the warning refers to is a social app called IRL, and although some people have received unsolicited text messages sent from this app, there's no evidence whatsoever that the phenomenon has any connection to sex trafficking schemes. The home page for the app IRL, which stands for In Real Life, states that it was designed in order to make it easy and fun to send and receive invites to hang out with friends in real life. Although these invites are typically handled within the app itself, an IRL user can send an invititation to a non-IRL user via text messaging. The IRL web site explains why a non-IRL user might receive a text message from the IRL app: Abraham Shafi, one of the co-founders and CEO of IRL, responded to some of the concerns people had about the app in a July thread on Reddit: A spokesperson for IRL told Gizmodo that rumors holding that the app had been linked to sex trafficking were incredibly false and nowhere near accurate. We also reached out to IRL for additional information and were told that the company was not aware of any reports regarding the app's being used to target women for that purpose, and that there was no truth to the claim that all your information can be taken once you click on an IRL link: Although some people have reported that they received unsolicited text messages from an app called IRL, these messages were merely an attempt to enlist others to join the service, not to lure them into the clutches of a sex trafficking ring.
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