Random calls possibly used to spread panic on Tesco store closures

(This is an entirely speculative post.)

Huge supermarket chain, Tesco, shut down 14 stores over the weekend due to security issues. Here are some brief details from The Guardian:

Link: Tesco back to normal after alert | UK Latest | Guardian Unlimited

Trading returned to normal at Tesco after a security alert forced 14 stores to close across the UK.
Police are investigating who is responsible for the “series of threats” that led to the evacuation to hundreds of thousands of customers.

Eyewitnesses claimed they had been told of a bomb scare, while reports ranged from a financial motive to threats by the animal rights lobby.

Now, here’s what’s rather curious. An SMS Text News reader was sat in a pub at the weekend with his friends when the friend got a phone call on his mobile from a withheld number.

His friend answered. It was a lady he didn’t know and the call was completely out of the blue.

The lady proceeded to tell the friend that…

all tescos were closing cause of the scare and not to worry but it was a precautionary thing

The friend was mystified. He said thank you and hung up, entirely confused. Weird.

The SMS Text News reader speculates that this could have been a new kind of campaigning — ‘direct to consumer’. Get a list of mobile numbers — or randomly dial them — and attempt to create panic. How effective this could be if used widely, I don’t know. Although it would, I imagine, be rather challenging to engage an outbound call centre for this.