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Wireless

by Mike Masnick

Fri, Nov 30th 2001 9:25am





We Know If Your Mobile Phone Is On

from the oops dept

A slightly confusing article about a company in Germany that caused quite a mess by putting a simple little demo on their website. The demo let you easily find out whether or not anyone had their mobile phone on without them knowing. Apparently, this is a "feature" that not many people knew was included in the SMS text-messaging standard. Lots of people flipped out about privacy questions, and the company took down the demo. Now people are trying to figure out who to blame, and how to make sure such things don't happen again. Of course, people have been talking about things like "presence" info for a while, and it wouldn't surprise me if such services (though, only with users' permissions) were available in the near future.

3 Comments | Leave a Comment..


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  1.  

    so?????

    identicon
    Spaz, Nov 30th, 2001 @ 1:57pm

    Big deal, how else do you find out if a phone is on? You dial it, if it rings more then once....it is on. Don't ppl have phones for a reason?

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  

    Re: so?????

    identicon
    Ed, Nov 30th, 2001 @ 2:27pm

    But that rings the phone if it's on, letting the person know that someone is checking up on them, perhaps even supplying caller ID. The unique aspect of this SMS trick is that the person with the cell phone has no idea that it is happening.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  3.  

    Re: so?????

    identicon
    mhh5, Nov 30th, 2001 @ 5:18pm

    but landlines are "always on" and no one cares about that. Just leave your phone on all the time and what does it matter? My cell is always on -- doesn't mean I'm anywhere near it....

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


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