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What People Do
With SMS?
According to the GSM
Association, about 30 billion SMS (short
message service) messages are sent globally
every month. These have primarily been used as a
means of communication among people.
Now its use has been extended to just about
anything you can think of.
Increasingly, though, the world of SMS has
become a lot stranger than even Ripley's
Believe It Or Not. To find out a little more
about what we mean, read on.
Crime-stopping SMS
Police in the Netherlands have been sending
out text message bombs to stolen handphones.
According to a report by online publication
IDG.net, thieves are spammed with the message
every 3 minutes: "This handset was nicked,
buying or selling is a crime. The Police."
The police outwit the thief who's taken out
the phone's SIM (Subscriber Identity Module)
card, by taking advantage of the handset's IMEI
(International Mobile Equipment Identity)
number. Using this hardware identification
number, the authorities can track down what
mobile phone number is being used on the phone.
Once the number is known, the police start
bombarding the phone with the text message.
Amazing, this
idea is said to have resulted in a decrease
in handset robberies, and has just been
nominated for a crime prevention prize sponsored
by the Dutch Ministry of Justice.
Divorce by SMS
In the United Arab Emirates, a husband
divorced his wife by sending this message: "Why
are you late? You are divorced."
The SMS divorce was validated by the Islamic
court.
However, in Singapore, Muslim authorities
have annulled divorces via SMS, stating in a
press statement that they were "unanimous in
their view that divorce through SMS is
unacceptable". Their stance against wireless
divorces comes from "elements of doubt" over the
sender's identity and sincerity.
There's at least a happy-ever-after
conclusion to this strange turn of affairs. The
said husband changed his mind just hours after
sending the message. The couple were
subsequently reunited.
SMS an SOS lifeline
A woman sent an SMS cry for help to her
boyfriend in England from a sinking boat off
Indonesia. The message read: "Call Falmouth
Coastguard, we need help, SOS." A rescue effort
involving six planes and several boats was
launched, saving 11 lives from a watery death.
On the flip side, Bulletin with Newsweek
reported that mobile networks were never
designed to find people, and handsets aren't
emergency location devices.
"There are no base stations at sea and few,
if any, in national parks or deserts. Hikers and
sailors who assume they'll be found because
they've got a mobile signal are making a
potentially fatal mistake," noted the report.
SMS Porn
Phone sex is getting a new twist with mobile
drawings created by SMS text messages. These
range from stick figures performing indecent
acts to others that show a lot of creativity in
the use of symbols available on a telephone
keypad.
The images are either designed by users or
downloaded from the Internet, which network
operators are powerless at this point to police.
But what's more bizarre is New Zealand
Herald's
report that Vodafone believed the images are
being constructed and forwarded mainly by
children!
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