Monday, October 24, 2005

SMS - true or fake?? (edited)

I received a sms from an unknown sender yesterday night around 11.55pm. This is the sms,

“Need ur help 2forward 2 those hv blood type AB-ve.Need urgently 4 NgKianSeng at Hsp Universiti PJ.Ward 8U,Room35 hp 012-6558702.send 2others pls, very urgent.”

My first instinct when received this message was to forward it to as many people as I could. Since all details(even room number) are given in the sms, I felt that this must be a true case. I could not take any risk as this involve the chance of a person living, a precious life. It’s not worth it to save the 5 cent per sms and just leave that sms unforward in my inbox. I did not contact the sender as I thought that he chosen my number randomly. Therefore I forwarded it to more than 10 of my contacts at one shot. In just less than 5 minutes, I received a call from one of my friends. She asked whether I know the guy(NgKianSeng) mentioned. I told her that I don’t even know the sender of this message. After that we just chat randomly.

After hanging up the phone, I suspect something fishy. I suspect the truthfulness of this sms. I immediatelt try calling the handphone number in the sms (012-6558702). To my surprise, my call was forwarded to a voice message. I tried again for a few times. Same thing happened. I then made up my mind to call the sender of the sms.

“Helloo…..May I know who’s on the line please?”
“erm….I’m Chin Fei”
“ooohhhh……Chin Fei arr…I thought is who wor…”
“Haha…yala, I changed my handphone number recently.”
“wei….the sms you sent true or not one??”
“Dunnoo leh…I received 3 same sms from my friends liao wor….i just forwarded it out.”
“But I just call the number in the sms, my call was forwarded to a voice message.”
“Huh….why leh?you AB blood type meh??”
“Nolar…I just wanna check whether this message is true…”
“Oh….maybe the person switch off the handphone leh…”
“but if very urgent, won’t switch off handphone kuaa….”
“dunno wor like this….wah, you still thought of calling the number har…I just forwarded it out.”
“erm…nevermind if like this, I try again tomorrow….”

This morning, when I woke up, the first thing I do was to call that number. Again, my call was forwarded to a voice message.

I’ve no idea whether is this sms a true case. I pray that there is no such people who are so free and create such sms to fool people. May it be the telecommunication company(maxis, celcom, digi) who had created this sms to increase their turnover? Is it that someone wanted to let this number(012-6558702) to receive lots of unwanted calls? I have no idea! Hopefully this is not the case. It’s really a bad karma to take advantage of people sympathy to achieve their aim, a bad one indeed. Anyway, I’ll try calling that number to verify the sms! What do you think? Have you received the same sms? What will you do should you receive that sms?

(edited)

I managed to reach the owner of the handphone in the evening. According to him, this sms was "created" during September 2004. The patient had now fully recovered. He also thanked me for my concerns. I was very glad to have heard this news.

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