Risks of bogus e-mail addresses "FROM: ObL": Risks Digest 21.68

[Mats O. Bergstrom]

At 22:05 2001-10-08 -0700, Bill Steward wrote:

>Actually, the press article describes the message as an "SMS",
>which is a GSM Short Message Service cell-phone text message,
>rather than an email.  This implies that the Belgian police
>are either routinely eavesdropping on GSM text messages,
>or else some intelligence service is doing so and asked them
>to do the local legwork.

I doubt that the story is true. Belgium couldn't be that different
from Sweden. Since SMS-ing is cheap it's a major method of
communicating especially for younger (poorer) persons but
increasingly also for the middle aged. The "Hi, I feel lonely,
everybody seems out to get me, can I stay at your place for a while,
Grettings, Osama"-SMS joke chain letter - with several variants -
have been around here for several weeks and in a very large scale.
I've recieved several and everyone I've asked has got at least one,
usually from a close friend.

The joking community is unintentionally flooding Echelon.

//Mob