How to edit cell phone text information

December 23, 2008 11:19 AM

A friend of a friend who does not care for me told his friend that I sent him a text mesage to his cellphone and even showed his friend the message however, I did not send the message, do not know this person's cell ph # nor do I know his last name. The question is, how did he show my cell ph # as having sent a text message to his cell ph. It must be possible because my friend saw my # attached to this message in the inbox in his cell ph .
posted by tipper to Technology (13 answers total)

You can send txt messages from online gateways nowadays, including http://vtext.com/ (at least you could, it's not loading for me right now).
posted by inigo2 at 11:26 AM on December 23, 2008

maybe from here.
posted by bdc34 at 11:26 AM on December 23, 2008

Basically you can do it from a computer, as noted above. SMS isn't a highly secure vehicle for delivering messages.
posted by chunking express at 11:28 AM on December 23, 2008

If he didn't use a gateway, maybe he count have changed a contact so its name was identical to your phone number.
posted by PFL at 11:37 AM on December 23, 2008

could* have changed
posted by PFL at 11:38 AM on December 23, 2008

As a practical means of demonstrating this, you could send your friend a text message with his own number or 555-5555 using one of the methods above.
posted by burnmp3s at 11:39 AM on December 23, 2008

there's an app for the iphone that can fake calls (and presumably texts) from whomever you want.
posted by Jon_Evil at 11:43 AM on December 23, 2008

Best answer: depending on your cellphone company, you could also go the extra step of getting your bill printed out with all the numbers/dates/times of phone calls and text messages sent to prove that a) you didn't do it and b) your friend's friend is a lying psycho.
posted by lia at 1:11 PM on December 23, 2008 [1 favorite]

Well, considering how easy it is to fake cell phone Caller ID info.. its probably also not that hard to pull off something like SMS Spoofing (I believe thats the right term for it, but if I'm wrong, hopefully someone more SMS knowledgeable will chime in (no pun intended) and clarify).
posted by jmnugent at 6:42 AM on December 24, 2008

Best answer: If he did not use a gateway, how do you change a contact so it's name is identical to someone else's phone number?

What is SMS Spoofing and how does it work?
posted by tipper at 9:53 AM on December 30, 2008

Response by poster: If he did not use a gateway, how do you change a contact so it's name is identical to someone else's phone number?

Please help....
posted by tipper at 6:18 AM on January 23, 2009

Why exactly do you need to figure out what's up. Just tell your friend you didn't send it. That seems like the easiest solution to your problem. If your friends don't trust you, you might want to find new friends.
posted by chunking express at 6:41 AM on January 23, 2009

Response by poster: You are right, I don't need to proove anything, and that is not the reason for my inquiry.
I just want to know how it was done for my own sake, I'm intrigued and I want to know how easy or difficult it is in case it ever happens to me or someone else in the future. So, if anyone can help me with my question, I would appreciate it...
posted by tipper at 12:45 PM on January 27, 2009