Stories about ladies worrying if they find a bottle of water on their car or see “1F” scribbled outside their house have surfaced recently.
Viral videos suggest that they are being targeted by kidnappers and traffickers.
“1F” stands for “one female,” and it appears that the water bottle is a ruse to entice women to come out of their cars so they may remove the bottle.
A new video is currently going viral. A woman is seen filming a car with wire connected to the door handle while it is parked in a lot.
According to the video, “WTF is this a joke? Someone better not get kidnapped.” It then shows a second vehicle that has the wire wrapped around its handle.
@ice.lemon.water We thought it was a joke at first until we found the second one 😳 #fyp #foryou #foryoupage #scary #viral #trending #BoseAllOut ♬ Scary – Background Sounds
Soon after, a man posted another TikTok video in which he asserted that putting a zip-tie, wire, or thread on a car door is a typical tactic employed by those looking to abduct women.
In his video, he included the caption, “One of the oldest tricks in the book.”
He says that the wire is twisted on the handle so that it takes a long time to get off and allows thieves to kidnap a victim.
He advises not approaching the wire on your car by yourself and instead to return to your starting point or the area with the highest population density in order to seek assistance.
However, as it happens, there’s probably nothing to worry about. The “wire trick” was originally mentioned in a Facebook post from 2015.
However, the Poynter Institute states that the police in the Canadian city where the post was originally posted stated that no kidnappings had occurred as a result of the strategy. The “wire trick” hasn’t been seen as a trend by organisations that oppose s** trafficking.
The director of the University of Toledo’s Human Trafficking and Social Justice Institute described the allegations made in 2019 following another wave of social media warnings that originated in Texas and Michigan as “ridiculous.”
These were what a fellow police officer called “an urban legend or a scare-lore.”
They caution that since most traffickers operate online, their main instrument for enticing victims is a computer, or they target a person they know. “Very rare is it for them to prey on a stranger,” authorities said.