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A weird message popped up on my iPhone

L

Lewiji

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 1, 2007
14
0
Was just sitting around and my phone lit up, no vibration or sound, with a very strange looking message the like of which I've never seen before.

I've attached a screenshot of it, a black screen with the message in white in the middle, and a large green dismiss button at the bottom.

I'm a bit freaked out by it! I checked my SMS and mail accounts to see if the iPhone had just messed up it's method of notification, but nothing regarding Porcupine Tree was found :p

I'm currently wondering if someone's broken into my wifi and has been stealing music off my Mac and somehow managed to send a message to the iPhone, but googling revealed nothing about doing this.

Can anyone shed any light on this?
 

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Lewiji said:
I'm currently wondering if someone's broken into my wifi and has been stealing music off my Mac and somehow managed to send a message to the iPhone, but googling revealed nothing about doing this.
Click to expand...

Because it isn't possible...

gkarris said:
One of those "free" apps you downloaded? Prelude to advertising?
Click to expand...

Is this in reference to another thread of his regarding cracked apps? That might be the solution...
 
Phone is not jailbroken and is completely up to date - pretty sure app store apps couldn't do this?

A bit of googling revealed a hazy suggestion that this could be a "flash sms", but I couldn't find much about those, and nothing saying the iphone can receive them.
 
A flash SMS is a SMS that is not stored in the phone's memory and is deleted once dismissed/acknowledged. I don't know of many applications that can send these but have not really looked in to it.

A flash SMS looks the same as a normal SMS, so you should've seen a name or number from who it was from
 
I've contacted o2, and then remembered they have a service called bluebook which stores all your SMSs, it's from a friend's number it turns out (although going to his conversation in the SMS app doesn't show that message)

Rang him and yeah turns out it is a flash SMS.

So apparently... iPhone does support flash SMS
 
Again, for the posters above who didn't read my post

Chris.L said:
A flash SMS is a SMS that is not stored in the phone's memory and is deleted once dismissed/acknowledged. I don't know of many applications that can send these but have not really looked in to it.

A flash SMS looks the same as a normal SMS, so you should've seen a name or number from who it was from
Click to expand...

If the OP friend sent it to him it could've been from a website or an app for the iPhone. Software (such as the old Vodafone Text Centre) had the ability to send these sort of SMS'.

It might also be referred to as a type 0 (zero) SMS.

Depending on where it is sent from, you may or may not get charged. You more than likely will be charged by either your carrier, website or software provider
 
This happened to me the other day - just a text from a mate but that's how it appeared
 
My girlfriend has an old iPhone that her dad gave her when he upgraded to the 3G. She put a PAYG sim in it, and gets a flash SMS with her remaining balance everytime she sends an SMS or makes a call.
 
I just had the same type of message, but it said "Error. Could not complete your request.". Looked exactly like the screen shot the OP posted except for the difference in the words. I don't think anyone would send me a text message like that. I was afraid it was some kind of virus I hadn't heard of or something so I didn't press the dismiss button. I turned off the phone then turned it back on and it was gone.

AT&T in U.S. - iPhone 3g - 2.2
 
My girlfriend experienced the same occurrance last night. She received a message from her friend which was displayed in exactly the same way.

However it wasn't a flash message. Her friend who sent the message still has record of it in her sentbox and as it was simply a reply within an ongoing SMS conversation, it was sent in exactly the same was as all of the other SMS messages that my girlfriend had received that night. What was also strange though, was that she received it about 3 or 4 hours after it was sent.

As mentioned earlier, there is no record of that message in her phone's message history and it therefore is not present in amongst the conversation which it was intended to be in. My girlfriend has received messages from the same number since, and messages have been received in the usual way.

I find it strange that there is so little information online regarding this. Surely someone has the answer?
 
Any way to get this working form an o2 iphone to another o2 iphone?
I have a friend who's only just got one, andthought i'd play a birthday trick on him.
 
t0mat0 said:
Any way to get this working form an o2 iphone to another o2 iphone?
I have a friend who's only just got one, andthought i'd play a birthday trick on him.
Click to expand...

Start your message with the 3 characters *go and don't put a space after the go, for example *goYour iPhone will self-destruct in 15 seconds.....

The *go is for sending from an O2 phone, it varies from network to network
 
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