PlusOne – Marketing Musings

Flash mobs are groups that use SMS text messaging to come together quickly for a common cause or event. Often the txt is to alert a group of a party (or one to gatecrash), to gather for a demonstration (also used to coordinate activities in real time according to police responses as well) such as those that toppled the Spanish Government a few years ago.

Now the flash message has been used to incite racial violence as reported in Australia

Sydney police have made their first arrest over mobile phone text messages inciting violence in the wake of the Cronulla riots.

Strike Force Enoggera has been investigating the circulation of a series of text messages allegedly encouraging people to meet at Sydney beaches and continue the violence.

Detectives have now charged a Matraville man with using a carriage service to menace, harass or cause offence, as well as one count of print, publish to incite the commission of a crime.

What many are unaware of, is that ALL text messages are stored by telcos, allowing easy tracing of the origin of text messages, back several numbers

gathering and analysing information we’ve obtained from the carriers and this fellow was identified as one fellow that had been sending messages

Once numbers are identified even voice calls can be easily monitored.

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