Mobile phone privacy

[hyweldavies]

as others have surmised (correctly) the 'phone doesn't tell the network you are typing a text message until you send it. A complete text message up to 140 characters is squeezed into a single signalling message to the network. Hence the network does not and cannot know that you have part-typed a text message.

There are other messages when you connect to a different network, move area, turn phone on or off etc, which is obviously needed by the home network in order to actually work (ie in egypt if it's an egyptian phone), , but "it's xx o-clock, why hasn't she called?" is a more probable explanation, unless he is a proper switching engineer working and working on the particular network elements, in a maintenance role and abusing his position.

Hywel

[Georgina]

For sure this chap is very interested in me and has been very helpful. At this stage I am not worried about that as he lives in Cairo a long way from me. As I am still using one of those original antique Nokia phones that just makes calls and sends text messages I have no idea about technology advances and just exactly how much someone could see if they were a manager at Vodafone. I am having a bed delivered from Cairo soon and the driver does not speak any English so he has kindly offered to set up a conference call between my phone, the driver and himself so he can translate. I guess that is something easy to do but not from my antique phone. (And no I won't give directions to my house but meet the driver somewhere easy as my house is impossible to find anyway.)

So I am hearing that more modern phones than mine show you when your text message has been delivered. Does that mean when it is opened and read or just when the receiving phone has been switched on?

Thanks everyone for their inputs. It is really interesting learning everything!

[hyweldavies]

forgot about SMS delivery receipts. Some operators' short message service allow the sender to request a "delivery receipt". Basically the Short message Centre keeps trying to deliver the message according to various retry rules. It knows once it's been sucessfully delivered to the handset, then stops having to re-try. If a "delivery receipt" is offered as a service, then it can then send another short message to the original sender confirming this. As well as retrying periodiccally, it is prompted to retry if you (re-) attatch to the network (eg turn your phone on, or arrive in a new country). No malarkey going on if the network allows delivery receipts.

Hywel