Peculiar Texts

Debi

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Hey, this happened to me yesterday! Anyone else?

People puzzled by peculiar texts, and no one can say why

Published: Nov 7th, 2019 - 9:07pm (EST)
Updated: Nov 7th, 2019 - 9:13pm (EST)


If you woke up Thursday to a weird text that seemed totally out of place, you aren't alone. A mysterious wave of missives swept America's phones overnight, delivering largely unintelligible messages from friends, family and the occasional ex.

Friends who hadn't talked to each other in months were jolted into chatting. Others briefly panicked.

The best explanation seems to be that old texts sent in the spring suddenly went through. Two people said they figured out the original messages were never received. It's not clear why this months-long delay happened. Phone companies blamed others and offered no further explanations.

Stephanie Bovee, a 28-year-old from Portland, woke up at 5 a.m. to a text from her sister that said just "omg." She immediately thought something had happened to her newborn nephew at the hospital.

She started calling everyone. Her sister and her sister's husband didn't answer. She woke up her mom, freaking her out. It was three hours before she learned that everything was fine and the text was an odd anomaly.

"Now it's funny," she said. "But out of context, it was not cool."

Bovee figured out that people were getting some of her old texts that failed to go through when her sister and a co-worker both got texts that she had sent in February. The text her sister received wished her a happy Valentine's Day.

Mobile carriers offered unhelpful explanations for the weird-text phenomenon, which appeared to be widespread, at least according to social media.

A Sprint spokeswoman said it resulted from to a "maintenance update" for messaging platforms at multiple U.S. carriers and would not explain further. T-Mobile called it a "third party vendor issue." Verizon and AT&T did not answer questions.

Marissa Figueroa, a 25-year-old from California, got an unwanted message from an ex she had stopped talking to — and then he got one from her as well. Neither actually sent them last night, both said. Figueroa couldn't figure it out, even worrying that her ex was messing with her, until she saw reports of this happening to others.

"It didn't feel great," she said. "It just was not good for me and my mental health to be in contact with him."

A friend who'd just re-entered his life got a mystifying message from Joseph Gomez at 5:32 a.m. Thursday. In that text, Gomez seemed to assume she was on her way over to his house so they could order a Lyft.

It took a half hour of back-and-forth texting and help from a screenshot to clear up the situation. Can their relationship recover? Gomez, 22, said it was "confusion, then awkward, and then funny." No mixed messages there.
 
that's interesting, especially after reading this article, from quayles world.

AI deemed ‘too dangerous to release’ makes it out into the world
And there ya go!!! Yes I suddenly got a text at 3:40 AM from someone I had not heard from in 5 months giving me an odd bit of info that applied to something 6 months back! I, along with her, were totally confused!

And it's lovely to know they simply think they "fixed" that AI program "enough" to unleash it.
 
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So, for all you techie folks....what HTML or code can be placed in a text message to hold delivery for say 50 years...but apon delivery, show the date it was sent....just thinking if its done with a video message would be a cool time capsule kinda weird " message from beyond " sorta thing....and if enough did it it would be a new hacker type stunt from the past......crap, my mind is wondering weird stuff again...lol
 
So, for all you techie folks....what HTML or code can be placed in a text message to hold delivery for say 50 years...but apon delivery, show the date it was sent....just thinking if its done with a video message would be a cool time capsule kinda weird " message from beyond " sorta thing....and if enough did it it would be a new hacker type stunt from the past......crap, my mind is wondering weird stuff again...lol
Ha! I know just who to ask.

And good grief, Paul. First you are running a Naked Ghost TV program and now this? Your brain on overdrive is quite fascinating! :D
 
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So, for all you techie folks....what HTML or code can be placed in a text message to hold delivery for say 50 years...but apon delivery, show the date it was sent....just thinking if its done with a video message would be a cool time capsule kinda weird " message from beyond " sorta thing....and if enough did it it would be a new hacker type stunt from the past......crap, my mind is wondering weird stuff again...lol
I'm pretty sure that Google saves everything. We can just ask the Google server " got any messages from 50 years ago."
 
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Ha! I know just who to ask.

And good grief, Paul. First you are running a Naked Ghost TV program and now this? Your brain on overdrive is quite fascinating! :D
Haha, this got me thinking of the old days when most forums were still run off the old Usenet groups and were email connected, you could use HTML to set a time for postings and then flood a group and crash the system/group..text messaging is similar....this could actually be a weakness that could over whelm the towers, kinda like in a natural disaster when the cell towers get overwhelmed by ppl checking up on family...delayed messages could be a serious threat if done enmasse.....
 
Ha! I know just who to ask.

And good grief, Paul. First you are running a Naked Ghost TV program and now this? Your brain on overdrive is quite fascinating! :D
No rush on the ghost thing, I've got the entire afterlife to figure that one out....lol
 
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