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Long SMS messages reassembled improperly

I just had a very disturbing thing happen... I received a lengthy text from a friend... I called her a few minutes later and mentioned the text message... as we began to discuss the message, which was somewhat odd in nature, it turned out the message I received was NOT the message she sent... She had sent me a long message. The first segment was correct, followed by several words she had not typed, followed finally by the correct conclusion of her original message...

Somehow, "foreign" words were inserted into the MIDDLE of the message I received... I'm certain this has to do with "concatenation" of the original message segments because it exceeded the max length of 153 characters for concatenated SMS segments. According to some documentation I found, the receiving device (in this case my Android RAZR) is responsible for reassembling the message properly.. It failed, inserting a bad segment from some other message...

This could be a serious bug and cause very inconvenient consequences if the wrong segments were assembled and delivered to an unsuspecting user.

Has anyone else seen this?

Comments

breezex

This behavior is not that rare. Try email for long epistles. SMS is for short messages (the first S stands for Short) and there is no guarantee that long/split messages will all arrive or be assembled correctly. It depends on all the gateways and separate systems that the message parts pass through.

Verizon_Support

Huskermac, let’s get to the bottom of this!

I’ve researched this and did not find it to be a known reported issue. Is this the first time this has happened? Does the person sending the text message a Verizon customer? If not, who is their carrier? Have you had issues receiving enhanced text messages (text longer than 160 characters) in the past?

If you are still having this issue post back with additional details regarding the person sending the text so I can further assist.

John B

Follow us on Twitter @VZWSupport

AZSALUKI

ditto breezex. sms is fine for a few sentences, but i would use email for lengthy paragraphs. i feel that it "should" have been delivered properly, but after 153 characters, it's a crapshoot.

Huskermac

First of all, it was not an "epistle"... it was a three hundred characters... I've sent and received thousands like that without issue... this is the first time that I KNOW there was a problem. However, it may have happened before and I attributed it to mis-typing or bad spelling/grammar.

To John B: the sender was as Verizon customer sending from another state, using an iPhone. Thanks for your help.

AZSALUKI

i've had sms TO and FROM iphones not even go through.

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