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Question

How can I find out who has sent a malicious text to iPhone?

by Sep 22, 2011 7:10PM PDT

<span id="INSERTION_MARKER"> My boyfriend received a strange message on his iPhone the other week. It came up as a text message from 'unknown' and it had an offensive message attached. I don't have an iPhone but he says it came through like Tap Zoo does if that makes any sense?? Anyway he swiped it and put his password in and the message just automatically opened into a link to a offensive video and the message sent implicated me as the person in the video! I don't want to go into details but I'm sure you can imagine! Fortunately my boyfriend could work out that it wasn't me but he was unsure at first so it's very disturbing as obviously it must have been sent by someone who has seen me on numerous occasions as the likeness was uncanny but it also has to be someone who is a close friend of my boyfriend as there are not many people who have his mobile number. Whoever has done this has done it in a very malicious way because of the message attached and also in the way they have done so they can't be traced. My boyfriend contacted O2 to find out if they could work out who it was but they have been working on de coding it for the last week and are coming up with nothing. They said they can see the message coming in at 3.15am but they can't work out what it is or where it's from or how someone has done this.
<span id="INSERTION_MARKER">

Neither of us can understand why someone would do this to us and want to break us up in this way but it is obviously someone close to us which is really screwing our heads up and we really need to find out who has done this so we can have some closure on it.

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3 Posts
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Answer
unknown
by Forum moderator Sep 22, 2011 10:00PM PDT

If it the sender shows "unknown", there is little to nothing you can do to find the sender, short of a court subpoena and that is no guarantee. Works the same as if if someone calls your phone and blocks their caller ID. Sorry, but those are the facts.

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Answer
Might not be from a phone
by Sep 30, 2011 8:39PM PDT

The perpetrator may have sent the message from a computer, rather than a phone, there are many packages that can do this and it is easier to hide the sender's identity , or worse, spoof someone else's.

Not sure about an iPhone, never had one, but some phones allow you to block messages from "unknown senders". If an iPhone does, you may want to set that option, though you would lose all "unknown sender" messages - but then if they are trying to hide from you, do you really care?

This sort of garbage is one of the downsides of "always on" communications, put it down to some sick freak and forget it.

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Answer
Could be a stranger
by Oct 1, 2011 1:20PM PDT

If your boyfriend uses wifi in public places (who doesn't), it is quite possible his info was hijacked by a sick person, who then used the info to harass him. (I am assuming your boyfriend had pix of you on his phone, or that you were with him when the hijacking occurred.) So I would block Unknowns and not worry about it being a friend. Maybe someone on this site can suggest some security tips for the future?

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