Weird issue. Text bugging?

Oryx

As the title says, this is a weird one. I was hoping someone could give feedback on whether it is possible for a third party to intercept some or all text messages sent from a mobile number?

I know it seems a very paranoid thing to ask. The first issue that triggered this was when messages were sometimes not being actually delivered to a recipient, but a delivery report coming back to the senders phone. Put this down to a glitch at first, but it now happens regularly with one particular recipient.

Other non phone related stuff I wont go into has added to the paranoia, but I just wanted to ask the technical heads here if this text tapping was possible or the non delivery/delivery just a normal mobile phone type hiccup.

KrisW

In short, it's not easy for someone to do this. Listening in is easier (but not easy); actually blocking the message is quite hard to do.

Most likely cause it that the recipient's SIM is playing up. Also, less likely, the phone phone could be faulty (some old phones would not receive new messages if the small 12-message memory on the SIM card got filled up, even when there was plenty of space on the phone), or the phone's time and date settings may be incorrect so that it will place the new messages at the end of the Inbox, because they were received "before" the other ones. Or the person you're sending messages to may be mistaken or lying to you when they say they're not receiving them.

SMS traffic is encrypted between the phone and base-station. The rest of the journey is over a private network, where tapping would involve a lot more work than just "listening in". The encryption used has been broken, but it's not easy to grab just one message as it's flying past.

Even if the message can be eavesdropped, there is no easy way to intercept a message such that it doesn't get to the user's phone. If the phone is offline when you send the SMS, the message is held by the network, and isn't broadcast until the recipient phone connects on a base-station. Also, a failed delivery is retried by the network, so someone wanting to do this would not only have to prevent your handset receiving the message, but also forge a delivery receipt to send back to the network.

The delivery report is sent by the recipient phone. It only tells you that the phone has received and stored the message; it doesn't tell you that the recipient (person) has opened the message or read it.. there's no way to know that.

Hope this helps

Oryx

KrisW wrote: »

In short, it's not easy for someone to do this. Listening in is easier (but not easy); actually blocking the message is quite hard to do.

Most likely cause it that the recipient's SIM is playing up. Also, less likely, the phone phone could be faulty (some old phones would not receive new messages if the small 12-message memory on the SIM card got filled up, even when there was plenty of space on the phone), or the phone's time and date settings may be incorrect so that it will place the new messages at the end of the Inbox, because they were received "before" the other ones. Or the person you're sending messages to may be mistaken or lying to you when they say they're not receiving them.

Thanks for the input. This isnt my phone, its a member of my family who has the problem. Recipient has no problem with other messages received, and uses a smart phone on the same network as the sender. A chain of messages could go back and forth no problem, then a long message gets swallowed up somewhere. They sincerely wouldnt lie, and I dont know about being mistaken. Seems unlikely, somehow. They complain 'you never text me back!!'

The delivery report is sent by the recipient phone. It only tells you that the phone has received and stored the message; it doesn't tell you that the recipient (person) has opened the message or read it.. there's no way to know that.

Hope this helps

I did wonder if it was some kind of simple phone glitch that Id mention here and everyone would say, oh yeah, thats really common,youre just paranoid.

KrisW

The recipient should maybe ask for a new SIM-card. Otherwise, it may be a specific phone bug. Smartphones, oddly enough, have more problems with basic functions like SMS than their "dumb" cousins...

If it only happens on "long" messages, it could be a problem handling multipart messages, or MMS (some phones send "long" messages using MMS, other send them as a chain of regular, SMS, messages).

If either phone uses Google's Android OS (basically most non-Apple, non-Nokia, non-Blackberry smartphones), try asking on the special Android forum here - there are some occasional oddities with messaging on Android, but I've never heard that one before.

Oryx

Thanks for all your info. And for not thinking it was a mad thing to ask

RodVelvet

I know on some Nokia phones there is a feature called number screening. If someones number is added to number screening the texts are actually received and stored in a different folder. Tends to be mainly on lower end nokias for some reason. Might be worth checking if this feature is on the phone.