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The Smart Techie was renamed Siliconindia India Edition starting Feb 2012 to continue the nearly two decade track record of excellence of our US edition.

May - 2010 - issue > Tech Tracker

Enjoy Archiving SMSes? Soon it Wouldn’t be Possible

Eureka Bharali
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Eureka Bharali
Self destructing is more related to the tapes in Mission Impossible but now it will relate to the SMSes in your inbox. If you have the habit of storing important SMSes to come handy, then it could be at a loss as SMSes once read will be deleted on their own.

The Safe Text service introduced by Ogilvy Advertising deletes any message as soon as the recipient reads. Users must first sign up to the service by sending a regular text message with the word “Wired” to 83118. This gives access to a Web page that can be viewed on any mobile phone that has a data connection, and users can send their own message from there. When it’s received, users are warned that they will only have one chance to read the message before it’s deleted.

What worries the analysts are the implications of such a service in terms of legal issues and other inconveniences that come along with it. Maurene Caplan Grey, Founder and Principal Analyst, Grey Consulting, raises a valid point when he says, "Let's pretend I send you information that could be incriminating against me and then it disappears." He continues, "If there is any type of proceeding that makes that information pertinent and that information was purposely destroyed, that's illegal. That's spoliation. This could do more harm than good." Yet the celebrities that are already facing legal threats due to their SMSes, could be mourning over the non-release of the service earlier. Especially in the Indian scenario, no such service has been active here so far and it can open up a huge opportunity for Safe Text.
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