15 ms·
I sent my boyfriend a picture of a storm. He got one of a woman and a dog
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- dehrmann 5y agoLooks like it's SMS since the recipient is green. Guessing something funny in the cell network?
- codetrotter 5y agoIt’d be MMS since they sent an image. But yes, the sender has an iPhone and the recipient has an Android phone, from looking at the two screenshots. Hence it’s not using iMessage.
- Fnoord 5y agoMMS is just a SMS with the picture hosted on a proxy server. If you MITM the SMS, you can change the picture URL to another. I am not saying that's what happened; I am saying it could have happened, and rather easily as a prank, too.
- codetrotter 5y ago> MMS is just a SMS with the picture hosted on a proxy server. Are we sure about that? I don’t know much about the SMS and MMS protocols. And I remember when I had a phone that could only receive SMS, I’d get a link so I could view the message in the browser on a computer, so in that sense it is close to what you are describing. But from my limited understanding of SMS and MMS, I thought MMS is a distinct protocol. Looking at something that Twilio writes about SMS vs MMS, they say [1]: > MMS […] was built using the same technology as SMS to allow SMS users to send multimedia content. and then > Standard SMS messages are limited to 160 characters per message. If a message exceeds this limit, it is broken up into multiple segments of 160 characters each, depending on its length. Most carriers today automatically chain these messages together to ensure they arrive in the order they are sent. Unlike SMS, MMS messages do not have a standard limit. While their maximum size depends on the carrier and the device receiving the message, 300 KB is often mentioned as the largest size most carriers will reliably handle. So MMS sounds like an extension of SMS, but a thing of its own. I remember with another old phone I had, I’d be asked if I wanted to download the MMS messages I received. But not sure proxy server would be the word for it. To me, from my memory, proxy server seems to apply only when the device is not capable/not configured for receiving MMS. [1]: https://www.twilio.com/learn/messaging/what-are-sms-and-mms https://www.twilio.com/learn/messaging/what-are-sms-and-mms
- Fnoord 5y agoThe MMS content is hosted on a public HTTP server which the ISP themselves host (I'm not entirely sure anymore how the synchronization works). Yes, you may call it a proxy server, but since the data is temporarily cached I call it a proxy server, also the APN settings call it MMS proxy. The definition is pedantic.
- stubish 5y agoOr if you are reusing ids and a glitch happens when the system tries to store the image on the proxy server, the recipient might end up viewing the previous image that happened to use that id. Thankfully nothing embarrassing or incriminating.
- jcims 5y agoAmazon has some major SMS issues this week, could be some buggery in the phone network.
- olegious 5y agoIs there any significance to the fact that all the other messages in the thread appear to arrive instantly (same time stamp) while the message in question has a 1 min delay (the sender’s time shows 14:45, the recipient shows 14:46)?
- codetrotter 5y agoMMS for sending image needs to transfer more data, so that could be why the message with the image had a noticeable delay while SMS text messages arrived fast enough to have same time. But also it could have just been sent very close to the next minute. For example it could have been sent 14:45:58 and delivered 14:46:03.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- turndown 5y agoJust a guess but my assumption is that this is based around them having different OSs; even the messaging apps.
- coolgoose 5y agoOr the provider could have just had an issue and sent it later. You never had issues getting sms or mms delivered instantly? In Romania at some point it was so common across carriers that I was really happy when delivery receipts happened.
- rabbb 5y agoIn the old times all sms were transport of the tcap layer in ss7 stack. Tcap was reliable non flow controlled protocol with no way to handle the extra traffic(carriers just used 64kb trunk line) by all the new kids sending sms. Then somebody in the vendor community had the idea let’s drop sms if the trunk are too busy. The problem the protocol had no way to notify the sender of the drop message. You can imagine the path of the following hacks to solve that new problem
- yaacov 5y agoGuessing it’s a fake post for reddit karma
- userbinator 5y agoCould you explain the significance of karma for those of us who don't use Reddit? I know HN has karma too, but besides perhaps a tiny amount of bragging rights, it doesn't signify much.
- kqr 5y agoPeople will expend a lot of effort to optimise any metric that is seen as desirable by their social group. On Reddit, it's karma points.
- donatj 5y ago> tiny amount of bragging rights Hit the nail on the head. On Hacker News it's actually more significant because you unlock more powers the higher your karma like downvote
- cute_boi 5y agoNot everyone is logical in this world. Karma is like dopamine inducer to many people. High karma might make somebody feel good. It is just like a game where reaching high score generally do nothing but you know that some people want little bit of satisfaction ..?
- s_dev 5y ago>Could you explain the significance of karma for those of us who don't use Reddit? The accumulated internet points you gain from upvotes. In other words atomic level validation.
- dane-pgp 5y ago> it doesn't signify much. Nice humblebrag, Mr. 57305. ;-)
- Anon4Now 5y agoFor most people, it measures how much time they waste on the internet.
- savrajsingh 5y agoThe two images have the same hash? (~Impossible, I know.)
- LorenPechtel 5y agoIf they used a good hash it would be basically impossible. I'm thinking someone got sloppy and used a hash that wasn't so good, or used only part of a hash. (I've done the latter deliberately--folded the hash down to a 32-bit value accepting that a "hit" meant go to the disk and get the whole record to check. The occasional false positive cost less than the additional time spent reading the bigger hashes as I had millions that needed to be loaded into memory.)
- progre 5y agoOr someones GUID/UUID implementation is not as random as they thought.
- madaxe_again 5y agoNot impossible they do something like just name it after the time stamp and add some random digits - I’ve seen exactly this at a telco. “What about collisions?” “We’ll add another digit if it’s a problem.” So maybe it’s now a problem. Although with decreasing MMS volume you’d think not.
- torstenvl 5y agoSee also https://androidforums.com/threads/picture-text-mms-received-with-wrong-picture-within-message.487148/ https://androidforums.com/threads/picture-text-mms-received-... https://www.reddit.com/r/PushBullet/comments/3hx5fs/wrong_sms_sender_shown_wrong_picture_displayed/ https://www.reddit.com/r/PushBullet/comments/3hx5fs/wrong_sm... I wonder if the wrong image would still display if he opened it rather than just looking at the thumbnail.
- DJBunnies 5y agoFake.
- jasonlotito 5y agoApple has shared out photos of me without my permission. There was little to no urgency or care when I reported it. This is not a surprise, nor the least of their issues.
- Handytinge 5y agoNothing here indicates this is an Apple issue...
- jonahhorowitz 5y agoProbably fake, but as someone who implemented MMS systems years ago, MMS is just SMTP under the hood (with some extra stuff to make phone numbers work like email addresses)[0]. Since it's just stored as a message in a mailbox, it's entirely possible to get the wires crossed. Still, probably fake. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMS_Architecture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMS_Architecture
- cgb223 5y agoIf MMS works like email, does something exist where you can go through all your MMS messages and view or delete them from the SMTP server they’re stored on? Or, if I delete a MMS message on my phone, does it automatically delete it in said mailbox?
- shakna 5y agoDepends on your provider, but a number of them have SMTP Gateways for SMS/MMS.
- _zooted 5y agoThey likely don't have POP3/IMAP though which is what would be required for the reading aspect.
- ketralnis 5y agoThat isn't how email works either. SMTP as a protocol is a series of relaying/delivering servers, but there isn't really any storage being done by this servers aside from as part of queuing. Messages aren't normally "stored" in SMTP except while they're in transit.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Someone 5y agoSMTP is a protocol for transferring messages, not for storing them (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Message_transfer_agent#Transfer_versus_access https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Message_transfer_agent#Transfe...) So the claim is that the sending part of MMS is like the sending part of email.
- extr 5y agoReally doubt it's fake. A few years ago I got a random text from an acquaintance that said something out of context. I responded and she replied she had no clue what I was talking about. After googling it turned out that there had been some kind of glitch where select text messages from almost a year prior were "sent again" by carriers. Affecting very few people, but apparently enough to make industry news and of course I had been effected. Sure enough it was a message I had previously received that (in context) made perfect sense. So I believe that kind of stuff happens. Probably as simple as some backend data engineer running the wrong script.
- Panino 5y agoA similar thing happened to me at work, where we use O365 for mail (not my choice). One day lots of people starting getting mail that was sent about a year previously and not received until then (not resends as in your case). As an aside, O365 is easily the worst mail system I've ever personally used, by far, in about 25 years of email.
- jolmg 5y agoReminds me of > The Valentine’s Day Text Message Mystery https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21486124 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21486124 > Text messages being resent from February, in November https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21474961 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21474961
- zarzavat 5y agoThis happened to me last year! I received a text message from someone which, pre-pandemic was totally innocuous, but during pandemic seemed totally reckless and crazy, and I got really angry before realizing that it was a resend from long ago. Oops.
- marginalia_nu 5y agoSMS is like UDP, but less reliable. No delivery or ordering guarantee, messages may be stored and sent (re-sent) later.
- 5y ago
- praptak 5y agoWhile people do make stuff up to score imaginary internet points, this does not have to be a case here. Any "super rare" event you hear about on public media is actually something that happened to one of billions of humans within the timespan of a few decades. Having this many tries means that a random bit flip in the image id is a sufficient explanation. Or any other "improbable" event, which is actually quite probable given the huge sample.
- pcardoso 5y ago2 years ago on New Year’s Eve, I was on the couch with my wife talking and my Apple Watch sent a text message to the cleaning lady saying “I love you”. My guess is that the raise to talk gesture was triggered accidentally, and it somehow took some parts of the Portuguese words we were saying and understood it as “I love you” in English. I only knew after it sent the text, when it said “message sent”. It was even more troublesome as we had fired her months earlier due to misconduct. Luckily she had lost my number and there were no repercussion. Being New Year’s Eve she probably mistook it as a wrong number… Scared the crap out of me and made me disable Siri auto listening.
- tmnvix 5y agoSomewhat related: Once, when I called my uncle I got a different person on the line. They said that their name was Peter. I assumed I must have dialed the wrong number and apologised. I checked the number I had called and my phone was telling me that it was the one I intended to call. I tried it again and got through to my uncle. When I told him what had happened, he told me that he'd just received a call from 'Bob' asking to speak to 'Peter'.
- thiht 5y agoI have a fun one! One day I received a call from a friend. The conversation was awkward until he asked me why I called him. Neither of us had called the other, but both our phones rang, and we still don’t know what happened.
- habeebtc 5y agoI have also had this happen!