SMS to the rescue: texting saves boy's life
By Darren Murph 
posted Oct 5th 2006 6:55PM
posted Oct 5th 2006 6:55PM
Granted, it's incredibly annoying to be unknowingly tracked and monitored by your superiors, but you know what they say, you really can never be too careful. In the case of a Bourne, Massachusetts boy, the cellphone his parent's presumably used to keep a short leash on him ended up saving his life; after being duped on MySpace (haven't we learned by now?) and flown to a small town in Georgia, the hopeless kid was held captive by a crazed (albeit technically illiterate) maniac. By making the mistake of leaving the clever youngster alone -- and assuming all communication required spoken words -- the child was able to warm up those texting fingers and shoot out an SMS to his folks containing his exact location and precarious environment, which eventually led to his rescue. While specialized SOS phones are making emergencies easier to evade, it's good to see texting finally get some positive PR love for a change.[Via Textually]
Some good PR for myspace would be nice every once in a while. 99% of kids aren't idiots and wouldn't meet someone online in real life.
Some bad PR for MySpace would be very nice too. Like PC Magazine naming it the #1 worst web site. It's stupid people, get over it. I don't even get why it was a fad in the first place. Yay! Even an idiot can "design" a web site, have a blog and "upload" music to their site! Super-sweet!
Speaking of SMS. Some of the unsung heroes of 9/11/2001 were those genius Engineers from the old AT&T Wireless (now Cingular). I have heard 9/11 audio of the boys from Redmond completely schooling the fools at Verizon and their dopy mascot the “can you hear me guy”. That day Sprint and T-mobile had nothing and the then Nextel? Please. Nice crap iDen technology, falling our firefighters and police officers.
What was so great about what the engineers from AT&T wireless did? Well, some guy name Russ from somewhere out west presumably Redmond WA, kept popping into this 24hour emergency conference call with pure genius suggestions while the apes from the other mobile operators (Verizon, Sprint, Nextel, etc.) duh, brought pure lameness to the table.
Yes there were universal suggestions to deploy mobile cow cell sites and scanning equipment to try and get signals from the world trade center rubble but this guy kept coming up with awesome stuff like: “Hey folks why don’t we try doing searches on our respective SMS systems for key words like, HELP, HURT, 911, SOS, etc.” If that wasn’t enough he came back with more genus stuff like: “Why don’t we try these SMS data searches in multiple languages as well?” The list of gems from this guy went on an on, but the devastation on that day and the days that followed was just too great and by the 3rd and 4th day you could hear the hope in peoples voices slowly sliding away.
Kodos to you Russ and the AT&T Wireless Engineers whoever or wherever you all are. Hopefully Cingular kept you and understands the genius that you brought to those tragic days!!
The "child" in this story was 17 years old. Don't get me wrong, it's awful that this happened, and thank goodness he was able to text-message his SOS. But why did he think a 58-yr-old sheep breeder paid for his plane ticket to a remote Georgia farm?
Full story: http://www.telegram.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060930/NEWS/609300376&SearchID=73259035469245
while russ's suggestions weren't bad, they weren't really all that possible to implement.
most carriers stay as far away from reading your SMSs or recording your phone calls as they can, the reason being that if you read it, then you have to store it for 7 years, and must inform the customer that it's been recorded. that's a long time to store data not particularly valuable to the company.
secondly, since they don't have any legitimate business reason to record them, they don't have software to decode them. so to search for "help" or other words in SMS messages, then you'd have to write software to decode them and then search them. not something that can be done in a short period of time. secondly, SMSs aren't stored for any legitimate period of time as the collection directories aren't that big relatively speaking.
so you would have a tough time of going back to old messages after you'd written your code.
if at&t had the software to do this, which is somewhat hard for me to believe, then it was most likely being used for nefarious purposes before 9/11.
UM, DUDE, WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? See folks, this is why you have to READ and do research on a subject before you go popping off. Here are the real facts about most Mobile Operator SMS Platforms:
1. FACT – SMS messages are sent in the clear and are NOT encrypted unless the mobile users (on both end, use 3rd party software to perform encrypt/decrypt functionality).
2. FACT – Mobile Operator platforms DO NOT encrypt SMS messages by default unless an add-on is made to the platform to do it.
3. FACT – All Mobile Operators store SMS messages (some for as little as 3 days and as long as 10 days or more). That is why when someone sends you an SMS message on Tuesday and your phone was powered off until you powered it on on Friday, you are then able to get that message which was STORED (and in the clear to boot)!
4. FACT – Some SMS platforms come with built in search functionality especially since 9/11 (terrorist activity, law enforcement requests, etc.). Crontabs could also be run on older platforms.
5. FACT – I actually heard audio of the different Operators doing exactly what we are talking about.
So before you go rattling off a bunch of nonsense based on nothing, do some research first? And you sounded so convincing too. You my friend just got PWN’ED!!
I just purchased a Motorola V3x and i would like to know how to get a report for a delivered sms. I tried all options, or maybe I am missing some setting. Does anybody know anything about this? Thanks.