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!