The website of Alex Kinch, live from London
Posts tagged Opinion
Misread text causes mass police response
Oct 29th
Link: SMS confusion leads to hold-up false alarm | Herald Sun
A WOMAN sparked a frantic police response in central Brisbane today after misreading a text message from her boyfriend about a possible armed hold-up. However, a police spokeswoman said the incident was a false alarm and the result of a “miscommunication”.
She said a man had made verbal threats over the phone to the company, and one of its employees sent a text message about the incident to his girlfriend. However, the girlfriend “read it the wrong way” and told police there was an armed hold-up at the business.
California wants to ban teens texting whilst driving
Sep 10th
Link: Laws Target Teen Drivers’ Cell Phone Use – Breaking – Technology – smh.com.au
Rather than banning mobile usage completely, California – and a handful of other States – has come up with a nifty idea. They’re planning to ban teens from texting whilst driving.
Narin Leininger knows about the risks of talking on a mobile phone or sending text messages while driving. The 16-year-old high school junior says he’d only use his phone behind the wheel in an emergency _ a flat tire, traffic jam or crash.
But if he ever decided to whip out his phone to chat or text with a friend while steering, he wondered, could anyone stop him?
“There’s no way a cop could see if you’re texting under the steering wheel,” said Leininger, a student at San Francisco’s Lowell High School.
Which of course begs the question – at what age does it become safe to text and drive at the same time?
T-Mobile in pre-pay fraud shocker
Sep 10th
Link: T-Mobile hit by top up scam
IT/Tech website The Inquirer are reporting that T-Mobile are having some slight ‘issues’ to do with pre-paid top-ups and credit card fraud.
Apparently a reader contacted the website after discovering a fraudulent £40 payment on his credit card statement – which was quite impressive as he isn’t even a T-Mobile customer.
Reputedly the agent in T-Mobile’s help centre sounded very familiar with the situation and suggested that the company was currently experiencing problems with fraudulent top ups.
One of the problems with pre-paid is that the networks don’t actually know who the real owner of the handset is. It seems that T-Mobile’s online sign up system for topping up doesn’t even require a postal address.
The article speculates that “the system isn’t checking credit card numbers against a postal address when adding top ups”.
It’s all a bit ironic really that Ewan seems to be having so much trouble giving T-Mobile money from his debit card – yet they’ll quite happily let scammers top up their pre-pay accounts with a stolen card.
Google attempt to patent SMS payment
Sep 3rd
Link: Google puts in patent application for SMS text message payment system – say what?
Wait, hasn’t this already been done before? Indeed it has. SMS text message-based payment system have been in use for quite some time now, and it seems that Google has been keen to the new trend for about a year and a half.
The search giant has just published their patent application (filed Feb. 28, 2006) for an SMS text message-payment system, ostensibly called ‘GPay,” that would facilitate private transactions between a merchant and a customer for goods and services.
On this note, today I’m going to put in a patent application for something I call walking. It involves the movement of one foot in front of another, in a forward motion. It should facilitate transportation of people from one location to another without any increase in carbon emissions.
Hell, if Google can patent something that’s obvious and been around for ages, why can’t I? 
Mobile Phone Used to Pirate Cinema Movie
Aug 20th
Link: Mobile Phone Used to Pirate Cinema Movie
An Australian man is facing legal action after he is alleged to have used a mobile phone to record a cinema showing of the new Simpons movie and upload the file to be distributed over the internet. The video file was removed within a few days of being uploaded to the internet, and police raided the home of the 21 year old who is said to have made the recording.
Wonder what phone he used?
Phone radiation protection spray ad gets canned
Aug 17th
Link: Beauty Firm Censured Over Mobile Phone Radiation Facial Spray
Cellular News are reporting that the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) have censured a series of adverts by health and beauty firm Clarins, in which the company claimed their new product would “protect” people from mobile phone radiation.
The magazine and national press ad stated “If electromagnetic waves can penetrate walls, imagine what they can do to your skin. Today, electromagnetic waves generated by a host of modern day electronic devices join a list of well-known pollutants which can damage skin. For the first time, Clarins Research reveals the link between exposure to artificial electromagnetic waves and accelerated skin ageing.”
More on this rather bizarre story here.
Dead man clocks up $218 trillion mobile bill
Aug 12th
Link: Deceased Malayan hit with $218 trillion mobile bill | The Register
If you think your monthly mobile bill is high, spare a thought for one poor dead guy in Malaysia, who even though he was dead managed to run up an extraordinarly high phone bill.
A Malaysian man who paid off a $23 wireless bill and disconnected his late father’s cell phone back in January has been stiffed for subsequent charges on the closed account, MSNBC has reported. Telekom Malaysia sent Yahaya Wahab a bill for 806,400,000,000,000.01 ringgit, or about $218 trillion, for charges to the account, along with a demand from the company’s debt collection agency that he settle the alleged debt within 10 days, or get a lawyer.
Incidently that’s £115,000,829,066,960 – and 27 pence. An awful lot of money in any currency.
Bus driver sacked for txt lottery addiction
Jul 29th
Link: The Scotsman – International – Bus driver a mobile lottery loser
Spare a thought for Leszek Wojcik, a former bus driver from Slupsk in Poland. Having set his hopes on winning a 100,000 zloty (about £17,600) lottery prize, he decided to use his company mobile to send a text to enter the competition, at 2.4 slotys (around 42p). Then he had another go. And another. And another.
38,000 entries later, and having racked up a bill of about 94,000 zloty (£16,500), company officials noticed he’d exceeded his 15 zlotys (£2.60) a month phone bill allowance, and promptly gave him the sack.
It’s not known quite how he managed to send an average of 1,200 texts a day and still find time to drive his bus. Needless to say he didn’t win the competition, and is now without a job.
How did you break or lose your mobile?
Jul 18th
Following on from yesterdays story revealing some of the silliest reasons for claiming on mobile phone insurance, Steve asked for a thread on “mad mobile loss/theft/etc stories”. So here we go. Shall we let him kick off proceedings?
Personally my favourite excuse for buying a new phone was that as I leant over the toilet a few years back my phone slipped from my jacket pocket and went straight down the pan!! mad but true!
Nice one Steve!
I’ve got a few to share.. I forgot that I’d left a UK Nokia in the safe at a hotel in New York a few years back, and on the off chance I popped in a few months later – and got it back. I’ve also left a phone on a train, then came back a few hours later to lost property and it’s been handed in.. and my favourite? I dropped a brand new handset in a hot steaming cup of tea in a Wimpy. I was proudly showing it off to someone, who passed it back across the table and it slipped as he was handing it to me. I’m not sure what’s most embarrasing – the incident or admitting to being in a Wimpy outlet.
Share your stories please – the best one will get a small mystery prize. If you’ve got pictures to go with your tales of woe, drop them on a mail to alex@smstextnews.com.
Let the fun commence
My rabbit ate my mobile
Jul 17th
Link: The Strangest Insurance Claims for “lost” Mobile Phones
Insurance company CPP have just unveiled the results of a poll of 3,000 UK mobile users. As well as the more commercially interesting figures – like people in Edinburgh and Glasgow make on average 126,368 calls on their mobile in their lifetime – there were some disturbing answers on why people claim on their insurance.
Here’s some of the silliest from the survey:
- A bird pooed on my window and the phone fell in a bucket of water – it’s the birds fault
- A sheep rammed me in a field and crushed my phone
- A thief stole it and hid it up his bottom
- It was stolen by a magpie – I could hear it ringing from a tree
- My two year old put it in her potty and wee’d on it
- My rabbit ate it
Absolutely brilliant. If you’re more into useful stats and research, and want an insight into the habits of the average Brit mobile user, there’s plenty more on the original article.
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