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A user typing a text message on an LG enV (VX9900).

c
   refers to the exchange of brief written messages between mobile and portable
devices over cellular networks. While the original term (see below) was derived from referring to
messages sent using the Short Message Service (SMS), it has since been extended to include
messages containing image, video, and sound content (known as MMS messages). The sender of
a text message is known as a 

, while the service itself has different colloquialisms
depending on the region: it may simply be referred to as a 
 or a 
 in North America and
Australia, an   in the United Kingdom and most of Europe, and a c  in the Middle East,
and Asia.

The most common application of the service is person-to-person messaging[`

[, but text
messages are also used to interact with automated systems, such as ordering products and
services for mobile phones, or participating in contests. Advertisers and service providers use
texts to notify mobile phone users about promotions, payment due dates and other notifications
that can usually be sent by post, e-mail or voicemail.
]

-hide]

@  History
@ Uses
 . Commercial uses
w .. Text Messaging Gateway Providers
w .. Premium content
 . In business
 .3 Worldwide use
w .3. Europe
w .3. United States
w .3.3 Finland
w .3.4 Japan
w .3.5 China
w .3.6 Philippines
w .3.7 New Zealand
@ 3 Social impact
 3. Effect on language
 3. Texting while driving
 3.3 "Sexting"
 3.4 In schools
w 3.4. Bullying
 3.5 Law and crime
 3.6 Social unrest
 3.7 Texting in politics
 3.8 Medical concerns
 3.9 Texting etiquette
@ 4 Challenges
 4. Text message spam
 4. Pricing concerns
 4.3 Security concerns
@ 5 Text messaging in popular culture
 5. Records and competition
 5. Morse code
@ 6 See also
@ 7 References
@ 8 External links

6


SMS was first used in December 1992, when Neil Papworth, a 22-year-old test engineer for
Sema Group [1[ (now Airwide Solutions),[2[ used a personal computer to send the text message
"Merry Christmas" via the Vodafone network to the phone of Richard Jarvis.[3[
nitial growth of text messaging was slow, with customers in 1995 sending on average only 0.4
messages per GSM customer per month.[4[ One factor in the slow take-up of SMS was that
operators were slow to set up charging systems, especially for prepaid subscribers, and eliminate
billing fraud, which was possible by changing SMSC settings on individual handsets to use the
SMSCs of other operators. Over time, this issue was eliminated by switch-billing instead of
billing at the SMSC and by new features within SMSCs to allow blocking of foreign mobile
users sending messages through it. The end of 2000, the average number of messages per user
reached 35.[`

[

SMS is available on a wide range of networks, including 3G networks. However, not all text
messaging systems use SMS, and some notable alternate implementations of the concept include
J-Phone's "SkyMail" and NTT Docomo's "Short Mail", both in Japan. E-mail messaging from
phones, as popularized by NTT Docomo's i-mode and the RM BlackBerry, also typically use
standard mail protocols such as SMTP over TCP/P.

Today text messaging is the most widely used mobile data service, with 74% of all mobile phone
users worldwide or 2.4 billion out of 3.3 billion phone subscribers at end of 2007 being active
users of the Short Message Service. n countries such as Finland, Sweden and Norway, over 85%
of the population use SMS. The European average is about 80% and North America is rapidly
catching up with over 60% active users of SMS by end of 2008. The largest average usage of the
service by mobile phone subscribers is in the Philippines with an average of 27 texts sent per day
by subscriber. n Singapore the average is 12 and in South Korea 10.[`

[

Text messaging was reported to have addictive tendencies by the Global Messaging Survey by
Nokia in 2002 and was confirmed to be addictive by the study at the Catholic University of
Leuven in Belgium in 2004. Since then the study at the University of Queensland in Australia
has found that text messaging is the most addictive digital service on mobile or nternet. The text
reception habit introduces a need to remain connected, called "Reachability".[5[

x
An English text messaging interface on a mobile phone

Text messaging is most often used between private mobile phone users, as a substitute for voice
calls in situations where voice communication is impossible or undesirable. n some regions, text
messaging is significantly cheaper than placing a phone call to another mobile phone; elsewhere,
text messaging is popular despite the negligible cost of voice calls.

Short message services are developing very rapidly throughout the world. n 2000, just 17 billion
SMS messages were sent; in 2001, the number was up to 250 billion, and 500 billion SMS
messages in 2004, which represents close to 100 text messages for every person in the
world.[`

[ At an average cost of USD 0.10 per message,[`

[ this generates
revenues in excess of $50 billion for mobile telephone operators.

SMS is particularly popular in Europe, Asia (excluding Japan; see below), Australia and New
Zealand. Popularity has grown to a sufficient extent that the term

 (used as a verb meaning
the act of mobile phone users sending short messages back and forth) has entered the common
lexicon. Young Asians consider SMS as the most popular mobile phone application.[6[

n China, SMS is very popular, and has brought service providers significant profit (18 billion
short messages were sent in 2001).[7[ t is a very influential and powerful tool in the Philippines,
where the average user sends 1012 text messages a day. The Philippines alone sends on the
average 400 million text messages a day or approximately 142 billion text messages sent a
year,[8[ more than the annual average SMS volume of the countries in Europe, and even China
and ndia. SMS is hugely popular in ndia, where youngsters often exchange lots of text
messages, and companies provide alerts, infotainment, news, cricket scores update,
railway/airline booking, mobile billing, and banking services on SMS.

Texting became popular in the Philippines in 1998. n 2001, text messaging played an important
role in deposing former Philippine president Joseph Estrada. Similarly, in 2008, text messaging
played a primary role in the implication of former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick in an SMS
sex scandal.[9[

Short messages are particularly popular among young urbanites. n many markets, the service is
comparatively cheap. For example, in Australia a message typically costs between AUD 0.20
and AUD 0.25 to send (some prepaid services charge AUD 0.01 between their own phones),
compared with a voice call, which costs somewhere between AUD 0.40 and AUD 2.00 per
minute (commonly charged in half-minute blocks). Despite the low cost to the consumer, the
service is enormously profitable to the service providers. At a typical length of only 190 bytes
(incl. protocol overhead), more than 350 of these messages per minute can be transmitted at the
same data rate as a usual voice call (9 kbit/s).

Mobile Service Providers in New Zealand, such as Vodafone and Boost Mobile, provide up to
2000 SMS messages for NZ$10 per month. Users on these plans send on average 1500 SMS
messages every month.
Text messaging has become so popular that advertising agencies and advertisers are now
jumping into the text message business. Services that provide bulk text message sending are also
becoming a popular way for clubs, associations, and advertisers to quickly reach a group of opt-
in subscribers. This advertising has proven to be extremely effective, but some insiders[u
u
[
worry that advertisers may abuse the power of mobile marketing and it will someday be
considered spam.[`

[

]
 


A multimedia message on a Sony Ericsson mobile phone

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SMS gateway providers facilitate the SMS traffic between businesses and mobile subscribers,
being mainly responsible for carrying mission-critical messages, SMS for enterprises, content
delivery and entertainment services involving SMS, e.g. TV voting. Considering SMS messaging
performance and cost, as well as the level of text messaging services, SMS gateway providers
can be classified as the cell phone aggregators or SS7 providers.

SMS messaging gateway providers can provide gateway-to-mobile (Mobile Terminated MT)
services. Some suppliers can also supply mobile-to-gateway (text-in or Mobile Originated/MO
services). Many operate text-in services on shortcodes or mobile number ranges, whereas others
use lower-cost geographic text-in numbers.[10[

   
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SMS is widely used for delivering digital content such as news alerts, financial information,
logos and ringtones. Such messages are also known as   


 

 
().
The subscribers are charged extra for receiving this premium content, and the amount is typically
divided between the mobile network operator and the value added service provider (VASP)
either through revenue share or a fixed transport fee. Services like 82ASK and Any Question
Answered have used the PSMS model to enable rapid response to mobile consumers' questions,
using on-call teams of experts and researchers.

Premium short messages are increasingly being used for "real-world" services. For example,
some vending machines now allow payment by sending a premium-rated short message, so that
the cost of the item bought is added to the user's phone bill or subtracted from the user's prepaid
credits. Recently, premium messaging companies have come under fire from consumer groups
due to a large number of consumers racking up huge phone bills. Some mobile networks, now
require users to call their provider to enable premium messages to reach their handset.

A new type of 'free premium' or 'hybrid premium' content has emerged with the launch of text-
service websites. These sites allow registered users to receive free text messages when items they
are interested in go on sale, or when new items are introduced.

An alternative to inbound SMS is based on Long numbers (international mobile number format,
e.g., +44 7624 805000 or geographic numbers, which can handle voice and SMS eg
01133203040[10[), which can be used in place of short codes / premium-rated short messages for
SMS reception in several applications, such as TV voting, product promotions, and campaigns.
Long numbers are internationally available, as well as enabling businesses to have their own
number, rather than short codes, which are usually shared across a lot of brands. Additionally,
Long numbers are non-premium inbound numbers.



The use of text messaging for business purposes has grown significantly during the mid '00's. As
companies seek competitive advantages, many employees turn to new technology, collaborative
applications, and real-time messaging like SMS, instant messaging, and mobile communications.
Some practical uses of text messaging include the fuse of SMS for confirming delivery or other
tasks, and for instant communication between a service provider and a client (e.g. stock broker
and investor), and for sending alerts. Several universities have implemented a system of texting
students and faculties campus alerts. One such example is Penn State.[11[

As text messaging has proliferated in business, so too have regulations governing its use. n
highly regulated industries like financial services, energy and commodities trading, and health
care, government regulations have steadily kept pace with technology innovations and now
address the need to supervise and archive employee text messages.[`

[ One regulation
specifically governing the use of text messaging in financial services firms engaged in stocks,
equities, and securities trading is  

`
`
 `
]  `

` !, issued to member firms by the Financial ndustry Regulatory
Authority. n 07-59, FNRA noted that "electronic communications", "e-mail", and "electronic
correspondence" may be used interchangeably and can include such forms of electronic
messaging as instant messaging and

 

  .[12[ ndustry has had to develop new

technology to allow companies to archive their employees' mad zombie syndrome text messages.

Security, confidentiality, reliability and speed of SMS are among the most important guarantees
industries like financial services, energy and commodities trading, health care and enterprises
demand in their mission-critical procedures. One way to guarantee such a quality of text
messaging lies in introducing SLAs (Service Level Agreement), which are common in T
contracts. By providing measurable SLAs, corporates can define reliability parameters and set up
a high quality of their services.[13[ Just one of many SMS applications that has proven highly
popular and successful in the financial services industry is Mobile Receipting.


  
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SMS is used to send "welcome" messages to mobile phones roaming between countries. Here, T-Mobile
welcomes a Proximus subscriber to the UK and BASE welcomes an Orange UK customer to Belgium.

Europe follows next behind Asia in terms of the popularity of the use of SMS. n 2003, an
average of 16 billion messages were sent each month. Users in Spain sent a little more than fifty
messages per month on average in 2003. n taly, Germany and the United Kingdom the figure
was around 3540 SMS messages per month. n each of these countries the cost of sending an
SMS message varies from as little as 0.040.23 depending on the payment plan (with many
contractual plans including all or a number of texts for free). n the United Kingdom text
messages are charged between 0.050.12. Curiously, France has not taken to SMS in the same
way, sending just under 20 messages on average per user per month. France has the same GSM
technology as other European countries so the uptake is not hampered by technical restrictions.

n the Republic of reland, a total of 1.5 billion messages are sent every quarter, on average 114
messages per person per month.[14[ While in the United Kingdom over 1 billion text messages are
sent every week.[15[
The Eurovision Song Contest organized the first pan-European SMS-voting in 2002, as a part of
the voting system (there was also a voting over traditional phone lines). n 2005, the Eurovision
Song Contest organized the biggest televoting ever (with SMS and phone voting).

During roaming, that is, when a user connects to another network in different country from his
own, the prices are much higher, usually 0.250.50 in Europe. Still, SMS is very popular during
trips, since calling is also much more expensive than usual. n July 2008, the EU decided to
introduce legislation that limits this price to 0.11.

Croatia is the leading country in sending SMS messages. An average Croat sends around 70
messages per month.

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n the United States, text messaging is also popular; as reported by CTA, the average number of
text messages sent per subscriber per month was 188.[16[ n the U.S., SMS is often charged both
at the sender and at the destination, but, unlike phone calls, it cannot be rejected or dismissed.
The reasons for lower uptake than other countries are variedmany users have unlimited
"mobile-to-mobile" minutes, high monthly minute allotments, or unlimited service. Moreover,
push to talk services offer the instant connectivity of SMS and are typically unlimited.
Furthermore, the integration between competing providers and technologies necessary for cross-
network text messaging has only been available recently. Some providers originally charged
extra to enable use of text, further reducing its usefulness and appeal. The relative popularity of
e-mail-based devices such as the BlackBerry in North America may be a response to the
weakness of text messaging there, but these further weaken the appeal of texting among the users
most likely to use it.[`

[ However, the addition of AT&T-powered SMS voting on the
television program "  `# has introduced many Americans to SMS, and usage is on the
rise.[`

[ n the third quarter of 2006, at least 12 billion text messages crossed AT&T's
network, up almost 15 percent from the preceding quarter.

n the United States, while texting is widely popular among the ages of 1322 years old, it is
increasing among adults and business users as well. The age that a child receives his/her first cell
phone has also decreased, making text messaging a very popular way of communication for all
ages. According to both the Mobile Marketing Association and Pew nternet & American Life
Project Surveys, 80% of U.S. Mobile phone users text.[`

[ The split by age group is as
follows: 1327: 87% text; 1537: 73% text; 2839: 44% text; 4049: 18% text. The amount of
texts being sent in the United States has gone up over the years as the price has gone down to an
average of $0.10 per text sent and received. Many providers also will make unlimited texting
available for a lower price.
n order to convince more customers to include text messaging plans some major cell phone
providers have recently increased the price to send and receive text messages from $.15 to $.20
per message.[17[[18[ This is over $1,300 per megabyte.[19[

  
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n addition to SMS voting, a different phenomenon has risen in more mobile-phone-saturated

countries. n Finland some TV channels began "SMS chat", which involved sending short
messages to a phone number, and the messages would be shown on TV a while later. Chats are
always moderated, which prevents sending harmful material to the channel. The craze soon
became popular and evolved into games, first slow-paced quiz and strategy games. After a while,
faster paced games were designed for television and SMS control. Games tend to involve
registering one's nickname, and after that sending short messages for controlling a character on
screen. Messages usually cost 0.05 to 0.86 Euro apiece, and games can require the player to send
dozens of messages. n December 2003, a Finnish TV channel, MTV3, put a Santa Claus
character on air reading aloud messages sent in by viewers. On March 12, 2004, the first entirely
"interactive" TV channel "VS" began operation in Finland. That did not last long though, as
SBS Finland Oy took over the channel and turned it into a music channel named "The Voice" in
November 2004.

n 2006, the Prime Minister of Finland, Matti Vanhanen, made front page news when he
allegedly broke up with his girlfriend with a text message.

n 2007, the first ever book written solely in text messages, Viimeiset viestit (Last Messages),
was released by Finnish author Hannu Luntiala. t is about a business executive who travels
throughout Europe and ndia.

Mobile service providers in Finland offer contracts where you can send 1000 text messages a
month for the price of 10.

 

Japan was among the first countries to widely adopt short messages, with pioneering non-GSM
services including J-Phone's "SkyMail" and NTT Docomo's "Short Mail". Japanese adolescents
first began text messaging because it was a cheaper form of communication than the other
available forms. Thus, Japanese theorists created the selective interpersonal relationship theory,
claiming that mobile phones can change social networks among young people (classified as 13-
to 30-year-olds). They theorized this age group had extensive but low-quality relationships with
friends, and mobile phone usage may facilitate improvement in the quality of their relationships.
They concluded this age group prefers selective interpersonal relationships in which they
maintain particular, partial, but rich relations, depending on the situation.[20[[21[ The same
studied showed participants rated friendships in which they communicated face-to-face and
through mobile/cell phone text message (MPTM) as being more intimate than those in which
they communicated solely face-to-face. This indicates participants make new relationships with
face-to-face communication at an early stage, but use MPTM to increase their contact later on. t
is also interesting to note that as the relationships between participants grew more intimate, the
frequency of MPTM also increased.

However, short messaging has been largely rendered obsolete by the prevalence of mobile
nternet e-mail, which can be sent to and received from any e-mail address, mobile or otherwise.
That said, while usually presented to the user simply as a uniform "mail" service (and most users
are unaware of the distinction), the operators may still internally transmit the content as short
messages, especially if the destination is on the same network.

]  

Text message is popular and cheap in China. About 700 billion messages were sent in 2007. Text
message spam is also a problem in China. n 2007, 353.8 billion spam messages were sent, up
93% from previous year. t is about 12.44 msgs/week/person.

Among Chinese migrant workers with little formal education, it is common to refer to SMS
manuals when text messaging. These manuals are published as cheap, handy, smaller-than-
pocket-size booklets, which offer diverse linguistic phrases to use as messages.[22[

 

n 1998, the Philippine SMS providers, launched texting for a price of 1 peso per message. t
became a popular tool for Filipinos to keep in touch with their love ones and friends. Filipinos
use it not only for social purposes but also political [1[. Texting allow the Filipinos to express
their opinions on current events and political issues. As a result, it became a powerful tool for
Filipinos in promoting or denouncing certain issues. Because the service is affordable, and GSM
service is starting to pick up on other countries, the Philippines became known as the text
capital of the world. SMS traffic has fast become a burden on these networks thus, they sought
to charge subscribers 1 pesos per SMS. Public outrage soon followed leading to establishment of
activist groups, nevertheless, the public are able to cope up with the costs. Presently each mobile
phone user in the Philippines is sending out at least 10 text messages a day compared to about 3
text messages per user in the United Kingdom (Pertierra 2005a; cf. Ling 2004). About one
Filipino in two is a subscriber to a mobile phone service.[23[

At the end of 2007 four of the top mobile phone service providers in the country stated there are
42.78 million mobile phone subscribers in the Philippines.[24[

   

There are three main telecommunication company networks in New Zealand. Telecom was the
first telecommunication company in New Zealand and owns all the land lines, however it also
"rents" them out for other companies to use. Vodafone acquired Bellsouth New Zealand in 1998
and claims to hold 53.7% of New Zealand mobile market as of 30 December 2007[25[ and
2degrees arrived in 2009. Around 85% of the adult population have a mobile phone.[26[




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The advent of text messaging made possible new forms of interaction that were not possible
before. However, it has also had an effect on the everyday language of its regular users[`


[
. Text messaging has become ubiquitous, and is used wherever mobile phone service is
available; for a large group[`

[ of users, their mobile phones function first as text
messaging devices, and secondly as voice calling devices. A person may now carry out a
conversation with another user without the constraint of being expected to reply within a short
amount of time, and without needing to set time aside to engage in conversation. Mobile phone
users can maintain communication during situations in which a voice call is impractical,
impossible, or unacceptable. Texting has provided a venue for participatory culture, allowing
viewers to vote in online and TV polls, as well as receive information on the move.[27[ Texting
can also bring people together and create a sense of community through Smart Mobs or Net
Wars, which create people power.[28[





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Main article: SMS language

This sticker seen in Paris satirizes the popularity of communication in SMS shorthand. In French: 


  !



 

 

The small phone keypad caused a number of adaptations of spelling, as in the phrase "txt msg",
or use of CamelCase, such as in "ThissVeryLame". To avoid the even more limited message
lengths allowed when using Cyrillic or Greek letters, speakers of languages written in those
alphabets often use the Latin alphabet for their own language. n certain languages utilizing
diacritic marks as in Polish, SMS technology created entire new variant of written language:
characters normally written with diacritic marks (eg. , , , in Polish), are now being written
without them (as a, e, s, z) to enable using cell phones without Polish script or to save space in
Unicode messages.

Historically, this language developed out of shorthand used in bulletin board systems and later in
nternet chat rooms, where users would abbreviate some words to allow a response to be typed
more quickly, though the amount of time saved is often inconsequential. However, this became
much more pronounced in SMS, where mobile phone users don't generally have access to a
QWERTY keyboard as computer users did, more effort is required to type each character, and
there is a limit on the number of characters that may be sent.

n Mandarin Chinese, numbers that sound similar to words are used in place of those words. For
example, the numbers 520 in Chinese ("wu er ling") sound like the words for " love you" ("wo
ai ni"). The sequence 748 ("qi si ba") sounds like the curse, "go to hell" ("qu si ba").

Predictive text software that attempts to guess words (Tegic's T9 as well as iTAP) or letters
(Eatoni's LetterWise) reduces the labour of time-consuming input. This makes abbreviations not
only less necessary, but slower to type than regular words that are in the software's dictionary.
However it does make the messages longer, often requiring the text message to be sent in
multiple parts and therefore costing more to send.

Website portals such as transl8it have supported a community of users to help standardize this
text speak by allowing users to submit translations, staking claim with their user handle, or to
submit top messages and guess the lingo phrases. The international popularity of this portal
resulted in late 2005 the publishing of the transl8it! dxNRE & glosRE (dictionary & glossary) as
the world's first, and most complete, SMS and text lingo book.

Wikinews has related news:
 

    
  
  

The use of text messaging has changed the way that people talk and write essays, some[29[
believing it to be harmful. n November 2006, New Zealand Qualifications Authority approved
the move that allowed students of secondary schools to use mobile phone text language in the
end of the year exam papers.[30[ Highly publicized reports, beginning in 2002, of the use of text
language in school assignments caused some to become concerned that the quality of written
communication is on the decline,[10[ and other reports claim that teachers and professors are
beginning to have a hard time controlling the problem.[10[ However, the notion that text language
is widespread or harmful is refuted by research from linguistic experts.[31[

An article in cu$% explores how text messaging has Americanized some of the
worlds languages with English. The use of diacritic marks is dropped in languages such as
French, as well as symbols in Ethiopian languages. n his book, Txtng: the Gr8 Db8, David
Crystal says that texters in all eleven languages use lol, u, brb, and gr8, all English-
based shorthands. The use of pictograms and logograms in texts are present in every language.
They shorten words by using symbols to represent the word, or symbols whose name sounds like
a syllable of the word such as in 2day or b4. This is commonly used in other languages as well.
Crystal gives some examples in several languages such as "talian sei six is used for sei you
are. Example: dv 6 = dove sei (where are you) and French sept seven = cassette (casette).
There is also the use of numeral sequences, substituting for several syllables of a word and
creating whole phrases using numerals. For example in French, a12c4 can be said as un de ces
quatres see you around (literally: to one of these fours). An example of using symbols in
texting and borrowing from English is the use of @. Whenever it is used in texting its intended
use is with the English pronunciation. Crystal gives the example of the Welsh use of @ in @F
pronounced ataf meaning to me. n character-based languages such as Chinese and Japanese,
numbers are assigned syllables based on the shortened form of the pronunciation of the number,
and sometimes the English pronunciation of the number, in this way numbers alone can be used
to communicate whole passages such as in Chinese 8807701314520 [can be[ literally translated
as Hug hug you, kiss kiss you, whole life, whole life love you. English influences worldwide
texting in variation but still in combination with the individual properties of languages.[32[
American popular culture is also recognized in shorthand. For example, Homer Simpson
translates into: ~(_8^(|).[33[

Recent research by Rosen et al. (2009)[34[ found that those young adults who used more
language-based textisms (shortcuts such as LOL, 2nite, etc.) in daily writing produced worse
formal writing than those young adults who used fewer linguistic textisms in daily writing.
However, the exact opposite was true for informal writing. This suggests that perhaps the act of
using textisms to shorten communication words leads young adults to produce more informal
writing, which may then help them to be better "informal" writers.

c  

A driver with attention divided between a mobile phone and the road ahead

Main article: Texting while driving

Texting while driving leads to increased distraction behind the wheel. n 2006, Liberty Mutual
nsurance Group conducted a survey with more than 900 teens from over 26 high schools
nationwide. The results showed that 87% of students found texting to be "very" or "extremely"
distracting.[35[ Then later on, a study by the AAA discovered that an alarming 46% of teens
admitted to being distracted behind the wheel due to texting. One example of distraction behind
the wheel is the 2008 Chatsworth train collision, which killed 25 passengers. Upon closer
investigation it became known that the engineer of that train had sent 45 text messages while
operating.

A 2009 experiment with ]  editor Eddie Alterman that took place at a deserted air
strip showed that texting while driving had a bigger negative impact on driver safety than being
drunk. While being legally drunk added 4 feet to Alterman's stopping distance while going
70 mph, reading an e-mail added 36 feet, and sending a text added 70 feet.[36[

n 2009, the Virginia Tech Transportation nstitute released the results of an 18 month study that
involved placing cameras inside the cabs of more than 100 long haul trucks, which recorded the
drivers over a combined driving distance of three million miles. The study concluded that when
the drivers were texting, their risk of crashing was 23 times greater than when not texting.[37[

Texting during protected left turns can cause yellow traps.


Main article: Sexting

Sexting is slang for the act of sending sexually explicit or suggestive content between mobile
devices using SMS.[38[ A genre of texting, it contains either text, images, or video that is intended
to be sexually arousing.

A portmanteau of sex and texting, sexting was reported as early as 2005 in c
c  & ,[39[ constituting a trend in the creative use of SMS to excite another with
alluring messages throughout the day.[40[

Although sexting often takes place consensually between two people, it can also occur against
the wishes of a person who is the subject of the content.[38[ A number of instances have been
reported where the recipients of sexting have shared the content of the messages with others,
with less intimate intentions, such as to impress their friends or embarrass their sender.
Celebrities such as Miley Cyrus, Vanessa Hudgens, and Adrienne Bailon have been victims of
such abuses of sexting.[41[

A 2008 survey by The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy and
CosmoGirl.com[42[ suggested a trend of sexting and other seductive online content being readily
shared between teens. One in five teen girls surveyed (22 percent)and 11 percent of teen girls
ages 1316 years oldsay they have electronically sent, or posted online, nude or semi-nude
images of themselves. One-third (33 percent) of teen boys and one-quarter (25 percent) of teen
girls say they were shown private nude or semi-nude images. According to the survey, sexually
suggestive messages (text, e-mail, and instant messaging) were even more common than images,
with 39 percent of teens having sent or posted such messages, and half of teens (50 percent)
having received them.

Sexting becomes a legal issue when teens (under 18) are involved because any nude photos they
may send of themselves would put the recipients in possession of child pornography.[43[




Text messaging has had an impact on students academically, by creating an easier way to cheat
on exams. n December 2002, a dozen students were caught cheating on an accounting exam
through the use of text messages on their mobile phones.[10[ n December 2002, Hitotsubashi
University in Japan failed 26 students for receiving e-mailed exam answers on their mobile
phones.[44[

The number of students caught using mobile phones to cheat on exams has increased
significantly in recent years. According to Okada (2005), most Japanese mobile phones can send
and receive long text messages of between 250 and 3000 characters with graphics, video, audio,
and web links.[45[ n England, 287 school and college students were excluded from exams in
2004 for using mobile phones during exams.[46[ Some teachers and professors claim that
advanced texting features can lead to students cheating on exams.[47[

 

The use of text messaging has been banned in many schools because the cause of harassment,
threats to the school security, and for cheating on tests and plagiarism[`

[.

Spreading rumors and gossip by text is also an issue of great concern. Text "bullying" of this sort
can cause distress and damage reputations. Harding and Rosenberg (2005) argue that the urge to
forward text messages seems difficult to resist, describing text messages as "loaded weapons".[48[

A survey conducted among mobile professionals in Europe and North America demonstrated
that 94% of those surveyed believed bullying by SMS to be a reality. The survey was conducted
via SMS among a pan European and North American mobile professional audience and 412
responded to the survey questions. The survey measured mobile professionals opinion on
bullying by SMS as well as their opinion on who should provide the protection against this
threat.[49[


  
This section     m 
m

 Please improve this
section if you can. M "


Not only has text messaging had an impact in schools, but also on police forces around the
world. A British company developed, in June 2003, a program called Fortress SMS for Symbian
phones. This program used 128 bit AES encryption to protect SMS messages.[50[ Police have also
retrieved deleted messages to frame cult member Sara Svensson after confessing to murdering
the wife of pastor Helge Fossmo and having shot his lover's husband Daniel Linde in Knutby,
Sweden. They traced the messages because she said she had acted anonymously on text forwards
received in her phone.[51[

Police in Tilburg, Netherlands, started an SMS alert program where they would send a message
to ask citizens to be vigilant when a burglar was on the loose or a child was missing in their
neighborhood. Several thieves have been caught and children found using the "SMS Alerts". The
service has been expanding rapidly to other cities.[ %`

[ A Malaysian/Australian company
released its "Crypto for Criminals" multi-layer SMS security program.[52[ Boston police are now
turning to text messaging to help stop crime. The Boston Police Department has established a
program where you can text in a crime tip anonymously to help stop crimes.[53[

A Malaysian court had ruled that it is legal to divorce through the use of text messaging as long
as you are clear and unequivocal.[54[


 

Texting has been used on a number of occasions with the result of the gathering of large
aggressive crowds. SMS messaging drew a crowd to Cronulla Beach in Sydney resulting in the
2005 Cronulla riots. Not only were text messages circulating in the Sydney area, but in other
states as well (Daily Telegraph). The volume of such text messages and e-mails also increased in
the wake of the riot.[55[ The crowd of 5000 at stages became violent, attacking certain ethnic
groups. Sutherland Shire Mayor directly blamed heavily circulated SMS messages for the
unrest.[56[ NSW police considered whether people could be charged over the texting[57[
Retaliatory attacks also used SMS.[58[

The Narre Warren ncident, where a group of 500 party goers attended a party at Narre Warren
in Melbourne Australia and rioted in January 2008, also was a response of communication being
spread by SMS and Myspace.[59[ Following the ncident, the Police Commissioner wrote an open
letter asking young people to be aware of the power of SMS and the nternet.[60[ n Hong Kong,
government officials find that text messaging helps socially because they can send multiple texts
to the community. Officials say it is an easy way of contacting community or individuals for
meetings or events.[61[

Texting was used to coordinate gatherings during the 2009 ranian election protests.

c


Text messaging has had a major impact on the political world. American campaigns find that text
messaging is a much easier, cheaper way of getting to the voters than the door to door
approach.[62[ Mexico's president-elect Felipe Caldern launched millions of text messages in the
days immediately preceding his narrow win over Andres Manuel Lopez Obradr.[63[ n January
2001, Joseph Estrada was forced to resign from the post of president of the Philippines. The
popular campaign against him was widely reported to have been co-ordinated with SMS chain
letters.[63[ A massive texting campaign was credited with boosting youth turnout in Spain's 2004
parliamentary elections.[63[ n 2008, former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his Chief of
Staff at the time became entangled in a sex scandal stemming from the exchange of over 14,000
text messages that eventually led to his forced resignation, conviction of perjury, and other
charges.[64[

Text messaging has been used to turn down other political leaders. During the 2004 U.S.
Democratic and Republican National Conventions, protestors used an SMS based organizing tool
called TXTmob to get to opponents.[65[ n the last day before the 2004 presidential elections in
Romania, a message against Adrian Nastase was largely circulated, thus breaking the laws that
prohibited campaigning that day. No action was taken.[`

[

Text messaging has helped politics by promoting campaigns. n 2006, the Scottish Socialist
Party initiated a campaign for people to text the First minister Jack McConnell to demonstrate
their support for free school meals.[`

[ SMS messages were used by Chinese nationalists
to rapidly spread word of the time and location of demonstrations during the 2005 anti-Japanese
demonstrations.[`

[ Political organisations such as Cymru X, the Plaid Cymru youth
wing, and the Young Scots for ndependence, the youth wing of the Scottish National Party, have
used a "text referendum" to gain public support and raise the profile of their respective
causes.[`

[

Furthermore, on January 20, 2001, President Joseph Estrada of the Philippines became the first
head of state in history to lose power to a smart mob.[66[ More than one million Manila residents
assembled at the site of the 1986 People Power peaceful demonstrations that has toppled the
Marcos regime. These people have organized themselves and coordinated their actions through
text messaging. They were able to bring down a government without having to use any weapons
or violence. Through text messaging their plans and ideas were communicated to others and
successfully implemented. Also, this move encouraged the military withdraw their support from
the regime and as a result the Estrada government fell.[66[ People were able to converge and unite
with the use of their cell phones. "The rapid assembly of the anti-Estrada crowd was a hallmark
of early smart mob technology, and the millions of text messages exchanged by the
demonstrators in 2001 was, by all accounts, a key to the crowds esprit de corps.[66[

 

 
Main article: Blackberry thumb

The excessive use of the thumb for pressing keys on mobile devices has led to a high rate of a
form of repetitive strain injury termed "Blackberry thumb."

Texting has also been linked as a secondary source in numerous traffic collisions, in which
police investigations of mobile phone records have found that many drivers have lost control of
their cars while attempting to send or retrieve a text message. ncreasing cases of nternet
addiction are now also being linked to text messaging, as mobile phones are now more likely to
have e-mail and web capabilities to complement the ability to text.

c

America's twentieth century etiquette guru, Emily Post, still has lessons regarding people living
in the twenty-first century. At the The Emily Post nstitute website, the topic of texting has
spurred several articles, with the "do's and dont's of regarding the new form of communication.
One example from the site is: "Keep your message brief. No one wants to have an entire
conversation with you by texting when you could just call him or her instead."[67[ Another
example is: don't use all Caps. Typing a text message in all capital letters will appear as though
you are shouting at the recipient, and should be avoided.
]

c



n 2002, an increasing trend towards spamming mobile phone users through SMS prompted
cellular service carriers to take steps against the practice, before it became a widespread problem.
No major spamming incidents involving SMS had been reported as of March 2007, but the
existence of mobile phone spam has been noted by industry watchdogs, including ]
 


magazine and the Utility Consumers' Action Network (UCAN). n 2005, UCAN brought
a case against Sprint for spamming its customers and charging $0.10 per text message.[68[ The
case was settled in 2006 with Sprint agreeing not to send customers Sprint advertisements via
SMS.[69[

SMS expert Acision (used to be LogicaCMG Telecoms) reported a new type of SMS-malice at
the end of 2006, noting the first instances of SMiShing (a cousin to e-mail phishing scams). n
SMiShing, users receive SMS messages posing to be from a company, enticing users to phone
premium rate numbers, or reply with personal information.

J 
 

Concerns have been voiced[70[ over the excessive cost of off-plan text messaging in the United
States. AT&T, along with most other service providers, charges texters 20 cents per message, if
they do not have a messaging plan or if they have exceeded their allotted number of texts. Given
that an SMS message is at most 160 bytes in size, this cost scales to a cost of $1,310[70[ per
megabyte sent via text message. This is in sharp contrast with the price of unlimited data plans
offered by the same carriers, which allow the transmission of hundreds of megabytes of data for
monthly prices of about $15 to $40 in addition to a voice plan. n addition, it has been revealed
that due to the nature of system used by carriers to send text messages between phones, texting
does not cost the carriers any money at all.[71[ This is because SMS messages are designed to fit
inside the bandwidth alloted to the "control channel", which is used to establish communication
between the mobile phone and the cellular tower. This channel is continuously active, so the
messages are piggybacking on the control signal, for free.

Although they deny any collusion all major carriers have increased pricing for out of package
text messages from 10 to 20 cents in the United States over the past two years (20072008).[72[
On July 16, 2009, Senate hearings were held to look into any breach of the Sherman Antitrust
Act.[73[

 
 

SMS should not be used for confidential communication. The contents of SMS messages are
known to the network operator's systems and personnel. Therefore, SMS is not an appropriate
technology for secure communications.[74[
c


 


 


Wikinews has related news:  
  
      

The  

'%(`
has a world record for text message, currently held by
Sonja Kristiansen of Norway. Ms. Kristiansen keyed in the official text message, as established
by Guinness, in 37.28 seconds.[75[ The message is, "The razor-toothed piranhas of the genera
Serrasalmus and Pygocentrus are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. n reality, they
seldom attack a human."[75[ n 2005, the record was held by a 24-year-old Scottish man, Craig
Crosbie, who completed the same message in 48 seconds, beating the previous time by 19
seconds.[76[

c'%"

`

lists Chris Young of Salem, Oregon, as the world record holder
for the fastest 160 character text message where the contents of the message are not provided
ahead of time. His record of 62.3 seconds was set on May 23, 2007.[77[

Elliot Nicholls of Dunedin, New Zealand, currently holds the World Record for the fastest
blindfolded text messaging. A record of a 160 letter text in 45 seconds while blindfolded was set
on 17 November 2007, beating the old record of 1 minute 26 seconds set by an talian during
September 2006.[78[

n January 2010, LG Electronics sponsored an international competition, the LG Mobile World

Cup to determine that fastest pair of texters. The winners were a team from South Korea, Ha
Mok-min and Bae Yeong-ho.[79[




A few competitions have been held between expert Morse code operators and expert SMS
users.[80[ Several mobile phones have Morse code ring tones and alert messages. For example,
many Nokia mobile phones have an option to beep "S M S" in Morse code when it receives a
short message. Some of these phones could also play the Nokia slogan "Connecting people" in
Morse code as a message tone.[81[ There are third-party applications available for some mobile
phones that allow Morse input for short messages.[82[[83[[84[





Look up   in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

@ Operator messaging
@ Telegram
@ MMS
@ Instant messaging
 @ SMS
@ LOL

 

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