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Looking back through 2002 it may well become referred to as the year that SMS grew up. At the start of the year there was much hype surrounding the UK Governments decision to test electronic voting via SMS. The announcement was made on the 5 February 2002, with the Government saying that it would test electronic voting in local elections in May 2002. The tests cost approximately £3.5 million and included voting by text messages from mobile phones using SMS.
Gartner raised a number of issues with SMS voting including usability problems, and summarised that "Whether SMS can become sufficiently secure, usable and anonymous for critical applications such as political elections remains uncertain".
Among the key reasons was usability with Gartner explaining that making mistakes with SMS is easy and that users may be unsure whether they have voted correctly. Given the problems and the publicity over voting in Florida for the US elections it may be that error rates and usability issues ultimately make the problem of SMS too large to overcome. There are also issues over anonymity and one solution of adding ID numbers could in fact increase the risk of usability issues.
Despite the apparent usability issues SMS text messages are sent in their millions. In March 2002 approximately 1.3 billion person to person SMS messages were sent according to figures captured by The Mobile Data Association. And not only is SMS popular with users it is also hugely popular with marketers. A recent survey by Enpocket published October 2002 identified that permission based mobile media is on average 50% more successful at building brand awareness than TV and 130% more successful than radio. Enpocket conclude that the success is attributable to the mobile phone being "such a personal and direct medium - the strength of an individual's relationship with their mobile phone is unique. It is an uncluttered medium in which the marketer's message can be tightly targeted by time of day/week, location and demographics to optimise relevance."
The summer brought with it a huge advertising campaign by Vodafone that suggested users get their flirting done before they arrive home. Maybe this campaign understood better than most the reason SMS is so popular with users in that it is perceived as a quick, personal, silent and ultimately private form of communication.
But maybe the bubble is about to burst. Massive security issues were raised late in the year by a court case surrounding Philip Nourse, a university student in England, who was sentenced to five months in prison for obtaining personal data, performing unauthorized modification of a computer program and harassment.
Among other activities, he posted highly personal information to his ex-girlfriend's Web space on the "Friends Reunited" site, and persuaded two friends at the mobile phone operator mmO2 to send him copies of her SMS communications. mmO2 dismissed the two employees but the issue of access to personal messages has now been clarified.
Although it has long been considered highly complicated for potential hackers to get into personal SMS messages it would seem that pressurising individuals into providing the relevant information is no longer beyond the bounds of reason. Gartner is suggesting that companies put out an immediate mandate that business users no longer transmit potentially confidential information via SMS. Maybe private users will also think twice before pressing the send button.
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