Alex Kinch

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]