Friday, February 08, 2008

Text Messaging Privacy

Texting is omnipresent, and it's in the news quite a bit. Text messaging has become a huge part of people's lives, especially the under 30 set. How private it texting?
According to various sources, here is some news:

AT&T says it keep messages for up to 72 hours, Sprint PCS for two weeks, and Verizon says texts don't stay on the network for a long period.

Here are a few tips to keep texts private:

* Don't ever text personal information such as your PIN number, password, or banking information to anyone. Remember, once you send that information to another person, it gets stored in their cell phone and you don't want that.
* Put a password on your phone to keep others from accessing your text logs or email. This will also prevent thieves from stealing information stored in your phone.
* iPhone owners may want to change their SMS preview settings to make incoming text messaging more private. Apple iPhone Review has instructions on how to do this.
* Those concerned about privacy can send anonymous text messages with services like AnonTxt.com.
* Don't forget to erase all your personal data before selling, recycling or donating your old phone.
* And last but not least, remember that no matter how secure you think your carrier's SMS servers are, the ultimate security of private text messages depends on the recipient.

Source here.