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A text message as it appears on the display screen of an before. Text messaging, or texting, is the act of composing and sending electronic messages, typically consisting of alphabetic and numeric characters, between two or more users of,, /, or other devices. Text messages may be sent over a, or may also be sent via an connection. The term originally referred to messages sent using the (SMS). It has grown beyond alphanumeric text to include multimedia messages (known as ) containing digital images, videos, and sound content, as well as ideograms known as (,sad faces,and other icons).

As of 2017, text messages are used by youth and adults for personal, family and social purposes and in business. Governmental and non-governmental organizations use text messaging for communication between colleagues. As with, in the 2010s, the sending of short informal messages has become an accepted part of many cultures. This makes texting a quick and easy way to communicate with friends and colleagues, including in contexts where a would be impolite or inappropriate (e.g., calling very late at night or when one knows the other person is busy with family or work activities).

Like e-mail and, and unlike (in which the caller hopes to speak directly with the recipient), texting does not require the caller and recipient to both be free at the same moment; this permits communication even between busy individuals. Text messages can also be used to interact with automated systems, for example, to order products or services from websites, or to participate in online contests. Advertisers and service providers use to send messages to mobile users about promotions, payment due dates, and other notifications instead of using,,. A text message on an announcing an Text messaging is most often used between private mobile phone users, as a substitute for voice calls in situations where voice communication is impossible or undesirable (e.g., during a school class or a work meeting). Texting is also used to communicate very brief messages, such as informing someone that you will be late or reminding a friend or colleague about a meeting.

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As with e-mail, informality and brevity have become an accepted part of text messaging. Some text messages such as SMS can also be used for the remote controlling of home appliances. It is widely used in systems. Some amateurs have also built own systems to control (some of) their appliances via SMS.

Other methods such as group messaging, which was patented in 2012 by the GM of Andrew Ferry, Devin Peterson, Justin Cowart, Ian Ainsworth, Patrick Messinger, Jacob Delk, Jack Grande, Austin Hughes, Brendan Blake, and Brooks Brasher are used to involve more than two people into a text messaging conversation [ ]. A is a type of text message that appears directly on the main screen without user interaction and is not automatically stored in the inbox. It can be useful in cases such as an emergency (e.g., ) or (e.g., ). Short message services are developing very rapidly throughout the world. SMS is particularly popular in Europe, Asia (excluding Japan; see below), United States, Australia and New Zealand and is also gaining influence in Africa.

Popularity has grown to a sufficient extent that the term texting (used as a meaning the act of mobile phone users sending short messages back and forth) has entered the common lexicon. Young Asians consider SMS as the most popular mobile phone application.

Fifty percent of American teens send fifty text messages or more per day, making it their most frequent form of communication. In China, SMS is very popular and has brought service providers significant profit (18 billion short messages were sent in 2001). It is a very influential and powerful tool in the Philippines, where the average user sends 10–12 text messages a day.

The Philippines alone sends on average over 1 billion text messages a day, more than the annual average SMS volume of the countries in Europe, and even China and India. SMS is hugely popular in India, where youngsters often exchange lots of text messages, and companies provide alerts, infotainment, news, cricket scores updates, railway/airline booking, mobile billing, and banking services on SMS. Texting became popular in the Philippines in 1998. In 2001, text messaging played an important role in deposing former Philippine president. Similarly, in 2008, text messaging played a primary role in the implication of former Detroit Mayor in an SMS sex scandal.

Short messages are particularly popular among young urbanites. In many markets, the service is comparatively cheap. For example, in Australia, a message typically costs between 0.20 and $0.25 to send (some prepaid services charge $0.01 between their own phones), compared with a voice call, which costs somewhere between $0.40 and $2.00 per minute (commonly charged in half-minute blocks). The service is enormously profitable to the service providers. At a typical length of only 190 bytes (including protocol overhead), more than 350 of these messages per minute can be transmitted at the same data rate as a usual voice call (9 kbit/s). There are also free SMS services available, which are often sponsored and allow sending SMS from a PC connected to the internet. Mobile service providers in New Zealand, such as and, provide up to 2000 SMS messages for NZ$10 per month.

Users on these plans send on average 1500 SMS messages every month. Text messaging has become so popular that advertising agencies and advertisers are now jumping into the text messaging business. Services that provide bulk text message sending are also becoming a popular way for clubs, associations, and advertisers to reach a group of opt-in subscribers quickly. Research suggests that Internet-based mobile messaging will have grown to equal the popularity of SMS in 2013, with nearly 10 trillion messages being sent through each technology. Services such as, and have led to a decline in the use of SMS in parts of the world. Applications [ ] Microblogging [ ].

Main article: Of many texting trends, a system known as microblogging has surfaced, which consists of a miniaturized blog, inspired mainly by people's tendency to jot down informal thoughts and post them online. They consist of websites like and its Chinese equivalent (微博). As of 2016, both of these websites were popular. Emergency services [ ] In some countries, text messages can be used to contact emergency services. In the UK, text messages can be used to call emergency services only after registering with the emergency SMS service. This service is primarily aimed at people who, by reason of disability, are unable to make a voice call. It has recently been promoted as a means for walkers and climbers to call emergency services from areas where a voice call is not possible due to low signal strength.

In the US, there is a move to require both traditional operators and messaging providers to support texting to 911. In Asia, SMS is used for tsunami warnings and in Europe, SMS is used to inform individuals of imminent disaster. Since the location of a handset is known, systems can alert everyone in an area that the events has made impossible to pass through e.g. An avalanche. A similar system known as is used in Australia to notify the public of impending disasters through both SMS and landline phone calls.These messages can be sent based on either the location of the phone or the address to which the handset is registered. Reminders of hospital appointments [ ] SMS messages are used in some countries as reminders of hospital appointments.

Missed outpatient clinic appointments cost the more than £600 million ($980 million) a year SMS messages are thought to be more cost effective, swifter to deliver, and more likely to receive a faster response than letters. A recent study by Sims and colleagues (2012) examined the outcomes of 24,709 outpatient appointments scheduled in mental health services in South-East London. The study found that SMS message reminders could reduce the number of missed psychiatric appointments by 25–28%, representing a potential national yearly saving of over £150 million. Commercial uses [ ].

A multimedia message displayed on a mobile phone Short codes [ ] are special telephone numbers, shorter than full telephone numbers, that can be used to address SMS and MMS messages from mobile phones or fixed phones. There are two types of short codes: dialing and messaging. Text messaging gateway providers [ ] providers facilitate the SMS traffic between businesses and mobile subscribers, being mainly responsible for carrying mission-critical messages, SMS for enterprises, content delivery and entertainment services involving SMS, e.g., TV voting. Considering SMS messaging performance and cost, as well as the level of text messaging services, providers can be classified as resellers of the text messaging capability of another provider's or offering the text messaging capability as an operator of their own with.

SMS messaging gateway providers can provide gateway-to-mobile (Mobile Terminated–MT) services. Some suppliers can also supply mobile-to-gateway (text-in or Mobile Originated/MO services). Many operate text-in services on shortcodes or mobile number ranges, whereas others use lower-cost geographic text-in numbers.

Premium content [ ]. This section does not any. Unsourced material may be challenged and. (July 2008) () SMS is widely used for delivering digital content, such as news alerts, financial information, pictures, GIFs, logos and ringtones. Such messages are also known as premium-rated short messages (PSMS). The subscribers are charged extra for receiving this premium content, and the amount is typically divided between the and the (VASP), either through revenue share or a fixed transport fee.

Services like and have used the PSMS model to enable rapid response to mobile consumers' questions, using on-call teams of experts and researchers. In November 2013, amidst complaints about unsolicited charges on bills, major mobile carriers in the US agreed to stop billing for PSMS in 45 states, effectively ending its use in the United States. Outside the United States, premium short messages are increasingly being used for 'real-world' services.

For example, some vending machines now allow payment by sending a premium-rated short message, so that the cost of the item bought is added to the user's phone bill or subtracted from the user's prepaid credits. Recently, premium messaging companies have come under fire from consumer groups due to a large number of consumers racking up huge phone bills. A new type of free-premium or hybrid-premium content has emerged with the launch of text-service websites. These sites allow registered users to receive free text messages when items they are interested in go on sale, or when new items are introduced.

An alternative to inbound SMS is based on (international mobile number format, e.g., +44 7624 805000, or geographic numbers that can handle voice and SMS, e.g., 0 ), which can be used in place of short codes or premium-rated short messages for SMS reception in several applications, such as TV voting, product promotions, and campaigns. Long numbers are internationally available, as well as enabling businesses to have their own number, rather than short codes, which are usually shared across a lot of brands. Additionally, Long numbers are non-premium inbound numbers. In workplaces [ ] The use of text messaging for workplace purposes has grown significantly during the mid-2000s (decade). As companies seek competitive advantages, many employees are using new technology, collaborative applications, and real-time messaging such as SMS,, and mobile communications to connect with teammates and customers. Some practical uses of text messaging include the use of SMS for confirming delivery or other tasks, for instant communication between a service provider and a client (e.g., stock broker and investor), and for sending alerts. Several universities have implemented a system of texting students and faculties campus alerts.

One such example is. As text messaging has proliferated in business, so too have regulations governing its use. One regulation specifically governing the use of text messaging in financial-services firms engaged in stocks, equities, and securities trading is Regulatory Notice 07-59, Supervision of Electronic Communications, December 2007, issued to member firms by the. In 07-59, FINRA noted that 'electronic communications', 'e-mail', and 'electronic correspondence' may be used interchangeably and can include such forms of electronic messaging as instant messaging and text messaging. Industry has had to develop new technology to allow companies to archive their employees' text messages.

Security, confidentiality, reliability and speed of SMS are among the most important guarantees industries such as financial services, energy and commodities trading, health care and enterprises demand in their mission-critical procedures. One way to guarantee such a quality of text messaging lies in introducing SLAs (), which are common in IT contracts. By providing measurable SLAs, corporations can define reliability parameters and set up a high quality of their services. Just one of many SMS applications that has proven highly popular and successful in the financial-services industry is mobile receipts. In January 2009, (MMA) published the Mobile Banking Overview for financial institutions in which it discussed the advantages and disadvantages of mobile channel platforms such as Short Message Services (SMS), Mobile Web, Mobile Client Applications, SMS with Mobile Web and Secure SMS.

Mobile interaction services are an alternative way of using SMS in business communications with greater certainty. Typical business-to-business applications are and, in which two applications automatically communicate with each other.

Incident alerts are also common, and staff communications are also another use for B2B scenarios. Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia Interlinear Pdf File. Businesses can use SMS for time-critical alerts, updates and reminders, mobile campaigns, content and entertainment applications. Mobile interaction can also be used for consumer-to-business interactions, such as media voting and competitions, and for consumer-to-consumer interaction, for example, with mobile social networking, chatting and dating.

Text messaging is widely used on business settings; as well, it is used in a number of and workplaces. And Canadian civil service both adopted smartphones in the 2000s. Online SMS Services [ ] There are a growing number of websites that allow users to send free SMS messages online. Some websites provide free SMS for promoting premium business packages. [ ] Worldwide use [ ] Europe [ ].

SMS is used to send 'welcome' messages to mobile phones between countries. Here, welcomes a subscriber to the UK, and welcomes an UK customer to Belgium. Europe follows next behind Asia in terms of the popularity of the use of SMS.

In 2003, an average of 16 billion messages were sent each month. Users in Spain sent a little more than fifty messages per month on average in 2003. In Italy, Germany and the United Kingdom, the figure was around 35–40 SMS messages per month. In each of these countries, the cost of sending an SMS message varies from €0.04–0.23, depending on the payment plan (with many contractual plans including all or a number of texts for free). In the United Kingdom, text messages are charged between £0.05–0.12. Curiously, France has not taken to SMS in the same way, sending just under 20 messages on average per user per month. France has the same technology as other European countries, so the uptake is not hampered by technical restrictions.

In the Republic of Ireland, 1.5 billion messages are sent every quarter, on average 114 messages per person per month. In the United Kingdom over 1 billion text messages are sent every week. The organized the first pan-European SMS voting in 2002, as a part of the voting system (there was also a voting over traditional landline phone lines). In 2005, the Eurovision Song Contest organized the biggest televoting ever (with SMS and phone voting). During, that is, when a user connects to another network in different country from his own, the prices may be higher, but in July 2009, EU legislation went into effect limiting this price to €0.11. Vasco Da Gama 6 Crack.

This section does not any. Unsourced material may be challenged and. (July 2008) () Mobile-service providers in Finland offer contracts in which users can send 1000 text messages a month for €10. In Finland, which has very high mobile phone ownership rates, some TV channels began 'SMS chat', which involved sending short messages to a phone number, and the messages would be shown on TV. Chats are always moderated, which prevents users from sending offensive material to the channel. The craze evolved into quizzes and strategy games and then faster-paced games designed for television and SMS control.

Games require users to register their nickname and send short messages to control a character onscreen. Messages usually cost 0.05 to 0.86 Euro apiece, and games can require the player to send dozens of messages. In December 2003, a Finnish TV channel,, put a character on air reading aloud text messages sent in by viewers. On 12 March 2004, the first entirely 'interactive' TV channel, VIISI, began operation in Finland. However, SBS Finland Oy took over the channel and turned it into a music channel named The Voice in November 2004. In 2006, the,, made the news when he allegedly broke up with his girlfriend with a text message. [ ] In 2007, the first book written solely in text messages, ( Last Messages), was released by Finnish author.

It is about an executive who travels through Europe and India. United States [ ] In the United States, text messaging is very popular; as reported by CTIA in December 2009, the 286 million US subscribers sent 152.7 billion text messages per month, for an average of 534 messages per subscriber per month. The found in May 2010 that 72% of U.S. Adult cellphone users send and receive text messages. In the U.S., SMS is often charged both at the sender and at the destination, but, unlike phone calls, it cannot be rejected or dismissed. The reasons for lower uptake than other countries are varied.

Many users have unlimited 'mobile-to-mobile' minutes, high monthly minute allotments, or unlimited service. Moreover, ' services offer the instant connectivity of SMS and are typically unlimited. The integration between competing providers and technologies necessary for cross-network text messaging was not initially available. Some providers originally charged extra for texting, reducing its appeal. In the third quarter of 2006, at least 12 billion text messages were sent on AT&T's network, up almost 15% from the preceding quarter. In the U.S., while texting is mainly popular among people from 13–22 years old, it is also increasing among adults and business users. The age that a child receives his/her first cell phone has also decreased, making text messaging a popular way of communicating.

The number of texts sent in the US has gone up over the years as the price has gone down to an average of $0.10 per text sent and received. To convince more customers to buy unlimited text messaging plans, some major cellphone providers have increased the price to send and receive text messages from $.15 to $.20 per message.

This is over $1,300 per. Many providers offer unlimited plans, which can result in a lower rate per text, given sufficient volume. Japan [ ] Japan was among the first countries to adopt short messages widely, with pioneering non-GSM services including 's and 's. Japanese adolescents first began text messaging, because it was a cheaper form of communication than the other available forms.

Thus, Japanese theorists created the selective interpersonal relationship theory, claiming that mobile phones can change social networks among young people (classified as 13- to 30-year-olds). They theorized this age group had extensive but low-quality relationships with friends, and mobile-phone usage may facilitate improvement in the quality of their relationships. They concluded this age group prefers 'selective interpersonal relationships in which they maintain particular, partial, but rich relations, depending on the situation.' The same studies showed participants rated friendships in which they communicated face-to-face and through text messaging as being more intimate than those in which they communicated solely face-to-face.

This indicates participants make new relationships with face-to-face communication at an early stage, but use text messaging to increase their contact later on. It is also interesting to note that as the relationships between participants grew more intimate, the frequency of text messaging also increased. However, short messaging has been largely rendered obsolete by the prevalence of mobile Internet e-mail, which can be sent to and received from any e-mail address, mobile or otherwise. That said, while usually presented to the user simply as a uniform 'mail' service (and most users are unaware of the distinction), the operators may still internally transmit the content as short messages, especially if the destination is on the same network. China [ ] Text messaging is popular and cheap in China. About 700 billion messages were sent in 2007. Text message spam is also a problem in China.

In 2007, 353.8 billion spam messages were sent, up 93% from the previous year. It is about 12.44 messages per week per person. It is routine that the People's Republic of China government monitor text messages across the country for illegal content.

Among Chinese migrant workers with little formal education, it is common to refer to SMS manuals when text messaging. These manuals are published as cheap, handy, smaller-than-pocket-size booklets that offer diverse linguistic phrases to utilize as messages. Philippines [ ] SMS was introduced to selected markets in the Philippines in 1995. In 1998, Philippine mobile-service providers launched SMS more widely across the country, with initial television marketing campaigns targeting hearing-impaired users. The service was initially free with subscriptions, but Filipinos quickly exploited the feature to communicate for free instead of using voice calls, which they would be charged for. After telephone companies realized this trend, they began charging for SMS.

The rate across networks is 1 peso per SMS (about US$0.023). Even after users were charged for SMS, it remained cheap, about one-tenth of the price of a voice call. This low price led to about five million Filipinos owning a cell phone by 2001. Because of the highly social nature of Philippine culture and the affordability of SMS compared to voice calls, SMS usage shot up. Filipinos used texting not only for social messages but also for political purposes, as it allowed the Filipinos to express their opinions on current events and political issues. It became a powerful tool for Filipinos in promoting or denouncing issues and was a key factor during the 2001 revolution, which overthrew then-President, who was eventually found guilty of corruption. According to 2009 statistics, there are about 72 million mobile-service subscriptions (roughly 80% of the Filipino population), with around 1.39 billion SMS messages being sent daily.

Because of the large amount of text messages being sent, the Philippines became known as the 'text capital of the world' during the late 1990s until the early 2000s. New Zealand [ ] There are three mobile network companies in New Zealand. (formally Telecom NZ), was the first telecommunication company in New Zealand. In 2011, Spark was broken into two companies, with Chorus Ltd taking the landline infrastructure and Spark NZ providing services including over their mobile network. Acquired mobile network provider Bellsouth New Zealand in 1998 and has 2.32 million customers as of July 2013. Vodafone launched the first Text messaging service in 1999 and has introduced innovative TXT services like Safe TXT and CallMe Mobile Ltd launched in August 2009. In 2005, around 85% of the adult population had a mobile phone.

In general, texting is more popular than making phone calls, as it is viewed as less intrusive and therefore more polite. Africa [ ] Text messaging will become a key revenue driver for mobile network operators in Africa over the next couple of years. Today, text messaging is already slowly gaining influence in the African market. One such person used text messaging to spread the word about HIV and AIDS. Also, in September 2009, a multi-country campaign in Africa used text messaging to expose stock-outs of essential medicines at public health facilities and put pressure on governments to address the issue. Social effects [ ] The advent of text messaging made possible new forms of interaction that were not possible before. A person may now carry out a conversation with another user without the constraint of being expected to reply within a short amount of time and without needing to set time aside to engage in conversation.

With voice calling, both participants need to be free at the same time.Mobile phone users can maintain communication during situations in which a voice call is impractical, impossible, or unacceptable, such as during a school class or work meeting. Texting has provided a venue for, allowing viewers to vote in online and TV polls, as well as receive information while they are on the move.

Texting can also bring people together and create a sense of community through 'Smart Mobs' or 'Net War', which create 'people power'. Research has also proven that text messaging is somehow making the social distances larger. It is ruining verbal communication skills for many people.

Effect on language [ ]. Main article: Texting while driving leads to increased distraction behind the wheel and can lead to an increased risk of an accident. In 2006, conducted a survey with more than 900 teens from over 26 high schools nationwide. The results showed that 87% of students found texting to be 'very' or 'extremely' distracting.

A study by found that 46% of teens admitted to being distracted behind the wheel due to texting. One example of distraction behind the wheel is the, which killed 25 passengers. The engineer had sent 45 text messages while operating the train. [ ] A 2009 experiment with editor Eddie Alterman (that took place at a deserted air field, for safety reasons) compared texting with.

The experiment found that texting while driving was more dangerous than being drunk. While being legally drunk added four feet to Alterman's stopping distance while going 70 mph, reading an e-mail on a phone added 36 feet, and sending a text message added 70 feet. In 2009, the Transportation Institute released the results of an 18-month study that involved placing cameras inside the cabs of more than 100 long-haul trucks, which recorded the drivers over a combined driving distance of three million miles. The study concluded that when the drivers were texting, their risk of crashing was 23 times greater than when not texting.

Texting while walking [ ] Due to the proliferation of smart phone applications performed while walking, 'texting while walking' or 'wexting' is the increasing practice of people being transfixed to their mobile device without looking in any direction but their personal screen while walking. First coined reference in 2015 in New York from Rentrak's chief client officer when discussing time spent with media and various media usage metrics. Text messaging among pedestrians leads to increased cognitive distraction and reduced situation awareness, and may lead to increases in unsafe behavior leading to injury and death. Recent studies conducted on cell phone use while walking showed that cell phone users recall fewer objects when conversing, walk slower, have altered gait and are more unsafe when crossing a street. Additionally, some gait analyses showed that stance phase during overstepping motion, longitudinal and lateral deviation increased during cell phone operation but step length and clearance did not; a different analysis did find increased step clearance and reduced step length. It is unclear which processes may be affected by distraction, which types of distraction may affect which cognitive processes, and how individual differences may affect the influence of distraction. Lamberg and Muratori believe that engaging in a dual-task, such as texting while walking, may interfere with working memory and result in walking errors.

Their study demonstrated that participants engaged in text messaging were unable to maintain walking speed or retain accurate spatial information, suggesting an inability to adequately divide their attention between two tasks. According to them, the addition of texting while walking with vision occluded increases the demands placed on the working memory system resulting in gait disruptions.

Texting on a phone distracts participants, even when the texting task used is a relatively simple one. Stavrinos et al.

Investigated the effect of other cognitive tasks, such as engaging in conversations or cognitive tasks on a phone, and found that participants actually have reduced visual awareness. This finding was supported by Licence et al., who conducted a similar study.

For example, texting pedestrians may fail to notice unusual events in their environment, such as a unicycling clown. These findings suggest that tasks that require the allocation of cognitive resources can affect visual attention even when the task itself does not require the participants to avert their eyes from their environment. The act of texting itself seems to impair pedestrians' visual awareness. It appears that the distraction produced by texting is a combination of both a cognitive and visual perceptual distraction.

A study conducted by Licence et al. Supported some of these findings, particularly that those who text while walking significantly alter their gait. However, they also found that the gait pattern texters adopted was slower and more 'protective', and consequently did not increase obstacle contact or tripping in a typical pedestrian context. There have also been technological approaches to increase the safety/awareness of pedestrians that are (inattentionally) blind while using a smart phone, e.g., using a or an ultrasound phone cover as a virtual white cane, or using the built-in camera to algorithmically analyze single, respectively a stream of pictures for obstacles, with Wang et al. Proposing to use machine learning to specifically detect incoming vehicles. Two girls text during class at school Text messaging has affected students academically by creating an easier way to cheat on exams.

In December 2002, a dozen students were caught cheating on an accounting exam through the use of text messages on their mobile phones. In December 2002, Hitotsubashi University in Japan failed 26 students for receiving e-mailed exam answers on their mobile phones. The number of students caught using mobile phones to cheat on exams has increased significantly in recent years. According to Okada (2005), most Japanese mobile phones can send and receive long text messages of between 250 and 3000 characters with graphics, video, audio, and Web links. In England, 287 school and college students were excluded from exams in 2004 for using mobile phones during exams. Some teachers and professors claim that advanced texting features can lead to students cheating on exams.

Students in high school and college classrooms are using their mobile phones to send and receive texts during lectures at high rates. Further, published research has established that students who text during college lectures have impaired memories of the lecture material compared to students who do not. For example, in one study, the number of irrelevant text messages sent and received during a lecture covering the topic of developmental psychology was related to students' memory of the lecture. Bullying [ ]. Main article: Spreading rumors and gossip by text message, using text messages to individuals, or forwarding texts that contain defamatory content is an issue of great concern for parents and schools. Text 'bullying' of this sort can cause distress and damage reputations.

In some cases, individuals who are bullied online have committed suicide. Harding and Rosenberg (2005) argue that the urge to forward text messages can be difficult to resist, describing text messages as 'loaded weapons'. Influence on perceptions of the student [ ] When a student sends an email that contains phonetic abbreviations and acronyms that are common in text messaging (e.g., 'gr8' instead of 'great'), it can influence how that student is subsequently evaluated. In a study by Lewandowski and Harrington (2006), participants read a student's email sent to a professor that either contained text-messaging abbreviations (gr8, How R U?) or parallel text in standard English (great, How are you?), and then provided impressions of the sender.

Students who used abbreviations in their email were perceived as having a less favorable personality and as putting forth less effort on an essay they submitted along with the email. Specifically, abbreviation users were seen as less intelligent, responsible, motivated, studious, dependable, and hard-working. These findings suggest that the nature of a student's email communication can influence how others perceive the student and their work.

Law and crime [ ] Text messaging has been a subject of interest for police forces around the world. One of the issues of concern to agencies is the use of text messages. In 2003, a British company developed a program called Fortress SMS which used 128 bit AES to protect SMS messages.

Police have also retrieved deleted text messages to aid them in solving crimes. For example, Swedish police retrieved deleted texts from a cult member who claimed she committed a double murder based on forwarded texts she received. Police in, Netherlands, started an SMS alert program, in which they would send a message to ask citizens to be vigilant when a burglar was on the loose or a child was missing in their neighborhood. Several thieves have been caught and children have been found using the SMS Alerts. The service has been expanding to other cities. A Malaysian–Australian company has released a multi-layer SMS security program.

Boston police are now turning to text messaging to help stop crime. The Boston Police Department asks citizens to send texts to make anonymous crime tips. Under some interpretations of, husbands can divorce their wives by the pronouncement of. In 2003, a court in Malaysia upheld such a divorce pronouncement which was transmitted via SMS.

The ruled in 2017 that under the state constitution, police require a before obtaining access to text messages without consent. Social unrest [ ] Texting has been used on a number of occasions with the result of the gathering of large aggressive crowds. SMS messaging drew a crowd to in Sydney resulting in the. Not only were text messages circulating in the Sydney area, but in other states as well ( Daily Telegraph).

The volume of such text messages and e-mails also increased in the wake of the riot. The crowd of 5000 at stages became violent, attacking certain ethnic groups.

Sutherland Shire Mayor directly blamed heavily circulated SMS messages for the unrest. NSW police considered whether people could be charged over the texting. Retaliatory attacks also used SMS. The Narre Warren Incident, when a group of 500 party goers attended a party at Narre Warren in Melbourne, Australia, and rioted in January 2008, also was a response of communication being spread by SMS and Myspace.

Following the incident, the Police Commissioner wrote an open letter asking young people to be aware of the power of SMS and the Internet. In Hong Kong, government officials find that text messaging helps socially because they can send multiple texts to the community. Officials say it is an easy way of contacting community or individuals for meetings or events. Texting was used to coordinate gatherings during the.

Between 2009 and 2012 the U.S. Secretly created and funded a -like service for Cubans called, initially based on mobile phone text message service and later with an internet interface. The service was funded by the through its, who utiliized contractors and front companies in the Cayman Islands, Spain and Ireland. A longer term objective was to organize 'smart mobs' that might 'renegotiate the balance of power between the state and society.' A database about the subscribers was created, including gender, age, and 'political tendencies'. At its peak ZunZuneo had 40,000 Cuban users, but the service closed as financially unsustainable when U.S.

Funding was stopped. In politics [ ]. Some health organizations manage text messaging services to help people avoid smoking Text messaging is a rapidly growing trend in Healthcare. [ ] 'One survey found that 73% of physicians text other physicians about work- similar to the overall percentage of the population that texts.' [ ] A 2006 study of reminder messages sent to children and adolescents with showed favorable changes in adherence to treatment. A risk is that these physicians could be violating the. Where messages could be saved to a phone indefinitely, patient information could be subject to theft or loss, and could be seen by other unauthorized persons.

The HIPAA privacy rule requires that any text message involving a medical decision must be available for the patient to access, meaning that any texts that are not documented in an EMR system could be a HIPAA violation. Medical concerns [ ]. Main article: The excessive use of the thumb for pressing keys on mobile devices has led to a high rate of a form of termed 'BlackBerry thumb' (although this refers to strain developed on older Blackberry devices, which had a scroll wheel on the side of the phone). An inflammation of the tendons in the thumb caused by constant text-messaging is also called text-messager's thumb, or texting. Texting has also been linked as a secondary source in numerous traffic collisions, in which police investigations of mobile phone records have found that many drivers have lost control of their cars while attempting to send or retrieve a text message. Increasing cases of Internet are now also being linked to text messaging, as mobile phones are now more likely to have e-mail and Web capabilities to complement the ability to text.

Etiquette [ ] Texting etiquette refers to what is considered appropriate texting behavior. These expectations may concern different areas, such as the context in which a text was sent and received/read, who each participant was with when the participant sent or received/read a text message or what constitutes impolite text messages. At the website of, the topic of texting has spurred several articles with the 'do's and dont's' regarding the new form of communication. One example from the site is: 'Keep your message brief.

No one wants to have an entire conversation with you by texting when you could just call him or her instead.' Another example is: 'Don't use all Caps. Typing a text message in all capital letters will appear as though you are shouting at the recipient, and should be avoided.'

Expectations for etiquette may differ depending on various factors. For example, expectations for appropriate behavior have been found to differ markedly between the U.S. Another example is generational differences. In The M-Factor: How the Millennial Generation Is Rocking the Workplace, Lynne Lancaster and David Stillman note that younger Americans often do not consider it rude to answer their cell or begin texting in the middle of a face-to-face conversation with someone else, while older people, less used to the behavior and the accompanying lack of eye contact or attention, find this to be disruptive and ill-mannered.

[ ] With regard to texting in the workplace, studied and found that 58% of US knowledge workers have increased the use of text messaging for work in the past five years. The same study found that 33% of knowledge workers felt text messaging was critical or very important to success and productivity at work. Challenges [ ] Spam [ ].

Further information: In 2002, an increasing trend towards mobile phone users through SMS prompted cellular-service carriers to take steps against the practice, before it became a widespread problem. No major spamming incidents involving SMS had been reported as of March 2007, but the existence of mobile phone spam has been noted by industry watchdogs including magazine and the Utility Consumers' Action Network (). In 2005, UCAN brought a case against Sprint for spamming its customers and charging $0.10 per text message. The case was settled in 2006 with Sprint agreeing not to send customers Sprint advertisements via SMS. SMS expert Acision (formerly LogicaCMG Telecoms) reported a new type of SMS malice at the end of 2006, noting the first instances of SMiShing (a cousin to e-mail scams).

In SMiShing, users receive SMS messages posing to be from a company, enticing users to phone premium-rate numbers or reply with personal information. Similar concerns were reported by PhonepayPlus, a in the United Kingdom, in 2012. Pricing concerns [ ] Concerns have been voiced over the excessive cost of off-plan text messaging in the United States., along with most other service providers, charges texters 20 cents per message if they do not have a messaging plan or if they have exceeded their allotted number of texts. Given that an SMS message is at most 160 in size, this cost scales to a cost of $1,310 per megabyte sent via text message. This is in sharp contrast with the price of unlimited data plans offered by the same carriers, which allow the transmission of hundreds of megabytes of data for monthly prices of about $15 to $45 in addition to a voice plan. As a comparison, a one-minute phone call uses up the same amount of network capacity as 600 text messages, meaning that if the same cost-per-traffic formula were applied to phone calls, cell phone calls would cost $120 per minute. With service providers gaining more customers and expanding their capacity, their overhead costs should be decreasing, not increasing.

In 2005, text messaging generated nearly 70 billion dollars in revenue, as reported by Gartner, industry analysts, three times as much as Hollywood box office sales in 2005. World figures showed that over a trillion text messages were sent in 2005. Although major cellphone providers deny any collusion, fees for out-of-package text messages have increased, doubling from 10 to 20 cents in the United States between 2007 and 2008 alone. On 16 July 2009, Senate hearings were held to look into any breach of the.

The same trend is visible in other countries, though increasingly widespread flatrate plans, for example in Germany, do make text messaging easier, text messages sent abroad still result in higher costs. Increasing competition [ ] While text messaging is still a growing market, traditional SMS are becoming increasingly challenged by alternative messaging services which are available on smartphones with data connections. These services are much cheaper and offer more functionality like exchanging of multimedia content (e.g. Photos, videos or audio notes) and group messaging. Especially in western countries some of these services attract more and more users.

Security concerns [ ] Consumer SMS should not be used for confidential communication. The contents of common SMS messages are known to the network operator's systems and personnel. Therefore, consumer SMS is not an appropriate technology for secure communications. To address this issue, many companies use an provider based on connectivity to route the messages. The advantage of this international termination model is the ability to route data directly through, which gives the provider visibility of the complete path of the SMS. This means SMS messages can be sent directly to and from recipients without having to go through the of other mobile operators.

This approach reduces the number of mobile operators that handle the message; however, it should not be considered as an end-to-end secure communication, as the content of the message is exposed to the provider. An alternative approach is to use end-to-end security software that runs on both the sending and receiving device, where the original text message is transmitted in encrypted form as a consumer SMS. By using key rotation, the encrypted text messages stored under laws at the network operator cannot be decrypted even if one of the devices is compromised. A problem with this approach is that communicating devices needs to run compatible software.

Failure rates without backward notification can be high between carriers. International texting can be unreliable depending on the country of origin, destination and respective operators (US: 'carriers'). Differences in the used for coding can cause a text message sent from one country to another to become unreadable.

In popular culture [ ] Records and competition [ ] The has a world record for text messaging, currently held by Sonja Kristiansen of Norway. Kristiansen keyed in the official text message, as established by Guinness, in 37.28 seconds. The message is, 'The razor-toothed piranhas of the genera Serrasalmus and Pygocentrus are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. In reality, they seldom attack a human.' In 2005, the record was held by a 24-year-old Scottish man, Craig Crosbie, who completed the same message in 48 seconds, beating the previous time by 19 seconds. The Book of Alternative Records lists Chris Young of, as the world-record holder for the fastest 160-character text message where the contents of the message are not provided ahead of time.

His record of 62.3 seconds was set on 23 May 2007. Elliot Nicholls of Dunedin, New Zealand, currently holds the world record for the fastest blindfolded text messaging. A record of a 160-letter text in 45 seconds while blindfolded was set on 17 November 2007, beating the old record of 1-minute 26 seconds set by an Italian in September 2006. Ohio native Andrew Acklin is credited with the world record for most text messages sent or received in a single month, with 200,052. His accomplishments were first in the World Records Academy and later followed up by Ripley's Believe It Or Not 2010: Seeing Is Believing. He has been acknowledged by The Universal Records Database for the most text messages in a single month; however, this has since been broken twice and now is listed as 566607 messages by Mr. Fred Lindgren.

In January 2010, sponsored an international competition, the, to determine the fastest pair of texters. The winners were a team from South Korea, Ha Mok-min and Bae Yeong-ho. On 6 April 2011, SKH Apps released an iPhone app, iTextFast, to allow consumers to test their texting speed and practice the paragraph used. The current best time listed on Game Center for that paragraph is 34.65 seconds. Morse code [ ] A few competitions have been held between expert operators and expert SMS users. Several mobile phones have Morse code ring tones and alert messages.

For example, many mobile phones have an option to beep 'S M S' in Morse code when it receives a short message. Some of these phones could also play the Nokia slogan 'Connecting people' in Morse code as a message tone. There are third-party applications available for some mobile phones that allow Morse input for short messages.

Tattle texting [ ] 'Tattle texting' can mean either of two different texting trends: Arena security [ ] Many sports arenas now offer a number where patrons can text report security concerns, like drunk or unruly fans, or safety issues like spills. These programs have been praised by patrons and security personnel as more effective than traditional methods. For instance, the patron doesn't need to leave his seat and miss the event in order to report something important. Also, disruptive fans can be reported with relative anonymity. 'Text tattling' also gives security personnel a useful tool to prioritize messages. For instance, a single complaint in one section about an unruly fan can be addressed when convenient, while multiple complaints by several different patrons can be acted upon immediately.

Smart cars [ ] In this context, 'tattle texting' refers to an automatic text sent by the computer in an automobile, because a preset condition was met. [ ] The most common use for this is for parents to receive texts from the car their child is driving, alerting them to speeding or other issues. Employers can also use the service to monitor their corporate vehicles. The technology is still new and (currently) only available on a few car models. Common conditions that can be chosen to send a text are: • Speeding.

With the use of, stored maps, and information, the onboard computer can determine if the driver is exceeding the current speed limit. The device can store this information and/or send it to another recipient. Parents/employers can set a maximum range from a fixed location after which a 'tattle text' is sent. Not only can this keep children close to home and keep employees from using corporate vehicles inappropriately, but it can also be a crucial tool for quickly identifying stolen vehicles, car jackings, and kidnappings.

See also [ ] • • • • • • •, and: Roman and medieval abbreviations used to save space on manuscripts and epigraphs References [ ].