Unaddressed Text Message? Stan Bubrouski May Be Reading It

By Michael Santo
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

Ever send a text message and forget to address it? If you’re sending it to the Verizon system, Stan Bubrouski may be reading the result. He thought he was being clever when he signed up for null@vtext.com as his vText account address, but he has paid for it since.

Bubrouski has gotten messages from ESPN, from OnStar, from people sending “Call Mom” and “Fix Car”-type messages. These are sometimes just silly (or annoying), and if he starts to get tons of messages from one address (like ESPN) he simply blocks it. But he’s also seen more private information such as medication reminders, SAT scores, and more.

SMS users, like e-mail users, rely on the fact that carriers like Verizon won’t accidentally deliver improperly formatted messages, such as those with no addressee, to an unrelated address, said John Pescatore, a vice president at Gartner. “There’s no way that this should be happening. No e-mail system would ever do that,” he said. Verizon should be rejecting messages with improperly formatted addressee information, not forwarding it to an account, he said. “I’ve received thousands of text messages over the past five years,” he (Bubrouski) wrote. “Probably only about 200 or so were actually meant for or even sent to me directly.” Source: eWeek

We Say: This is funny, but also interesting how being flippant and clever can get you into trouble. Equally interesting is that Bubrouski says he could change his address, thus stopping the flood of messages, but he actually enjoys them for the most part.