Sharpmail.co.uk - anonymous texting featured in The Observer
Congratulations to Danny Fletcher and team at sharpmail.co.uk. I bought The Observer today (a Sunday newspaper here in the UK) and saw a frontpage story about the service written by Lorna Martin.
Ever wanted to unite two love-lorn friends in a romantic tryst with a single, well-phrased text message?
That’s Lorna’s spin on the service - a good introduction for the general public. Although it will be interesting to see if there’s any outcry about the service.
Sharpmail’s PR have done an excellent job at minimising any potential outcry by having Danny quoted as saying that they keep a record of every message sent - and by whom - just in case there are any serious abuses.
That said, if you begin to consider the legal ramifications, you get stuck in quite a lot of ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’. One that has stumped the wife of a leading london Barrister, who, incidentally has a first class degree in law herself. I was trying to get her husband to give me a (free) legal perspective on the admissibility of text messages as evidence so I could publish it here. No luck - she’s a bit obsessed with babies to focus on important technical geekery 
Eventually I used my pigeon law experience to conclude that to my (potentially flawed) knowledge, text messages do not constitute appropriate notice for any legal transaction.
However one would imagine that if necessary a skilled barrister could convince a jury that text messages are so widespread as to be an acceptable for of communication.
The whole debate goes to pot when services such as Sharpmail are introduced to the equation because that demonstrates the insecure nature of the text medium. Anyone can be anyone!
Just seen this featured on BBC News - I really don’t like the idea of anyone being able to text as anyone else. The first thing I did was to visit the site to block my number being used like this (as he mentioned on the BBC) but can’t find the link!
Posted by Jonathan (digitaltoast) on October 1st, 2006 at 8:04 pm.As you and many of the readers on here are aware, I run http://www.URmyCrush.com and http://www.TextAnonymous.com that lets you send anonymous text message.
I have just changed the second service to only allow you to choose a particular “sender” name rather than enter your own or indeed a mobile number. The main reason for this was my mind playing nasty games with worries etc about what people could get up to with the service, though I guess that was part of the attraction of the service…
Anywho, onward and upwards…
Dave
Posted by Dave G on October 2nd, 2006 at 11:40 am.http://www.TextBritain.com
I must admit I reguarly use anonymous texting to wind up my mates - however, I use a site called hoaxMail (http://www.hoaxmail.co.uk).
Their prices are a lot cheaper and they offer far more features - go figure!
Posted by Simon Bartun on November 24th, 2006 at 12:58 am.Simon, I do the same, but use SneakSMS.com which i found to be cheaper
Posted by Mikey on August 7th, 2007 at 1:42 pm.I found an article that best explains the whole idea of Anonymous texting which is called secret identity texting. However if ur sending hate mail it’s not viable because places like peekamo or Bebo are well respected networks that you’d wanna use in the future. http://www.undertheradarblog.com/wp_blog.html?fb_2042860_anch=2905755
Posted by Kate on August 31st, 2007 at 8:18 pm.