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Communications United States AT&T Bug Verizon

A Ton of People Received Text Messages Overnight That Were Originally Sent on Valentine's Day (theverge.com) 82

Something strange is happening with text messages in the US right now. Overnight, a multitude of people received text messages that appear to have originally been sent on or around Valentine's Day 2019. From a report: These people never received the text messages in the first place; the people who sent the messages had no idea that they had never been received, and they did nothing to attempt to resend them overnight. Delayed messages were sent from and received by both iPhones and Android phones, and the messages seem to have been sent and received across all major carriers in the US. Many of the complaints involve T-Mobile or Sprint, although AT&T and Verizon have been mentioned as well. People using regional US carriers, carriers in Canada, and even Google Voice also seem to have experienced delays. At fault seems to be a system that multiple cell carriers use for messaging. A Sprint spokesperson said a "maintenance update" last night caused the error.
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A Ton of People Received Text Messages Overnight That Were Originally Sent on Valentine's Day

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  • I promised her that I would send her a message of my love. Which I did. But I have never heard from her again, and now I know why. She never received my message and felt betrayed. To never speak to me again.
    • How many people in a "ton"? Imperial ton, metric ton... inquiring minds would like to know.

      It's not going to be more than about 20 though, so why is this headline news?

      • by Thud457 ( 234763 ) on Thursday November 07, 2019 @02:08PM (#59391414) Homepage Journal
        a ton of people is about 7 average Americans.
      • by PA23 ( 1708056 )

        My friend got one from me that had been referencing president's day so that would have been right around Valentine's day.

      • How many people in a "ton"? Imperial ton, metric ton... inquiring minds would like to know.

        It's not going to be more than about 20 though, so why is this headline news?

        I received one of those texts last night, noticed it this morning.

        replied , "looks like a mistext"

        she was like "what?"

        Then we exchanged screen shots, the text was missing from her side. she tracked it back to V-day.

        Now i see this.

      • by Cederic ( 9623 )

        "Many" is the correct answer.

        If you did want to get all pedantic about it then it's highly variable, ranging from around three people requiring fire brigade assistance to leave their bed to something in the region of 700 former denizens of a 1940s German holiday destination in Poland.

    • Call 1-800-law-guys you can sue for your loses do to divorce

  • Doublespeak (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Joce640k ( 829181 ) on Thursday November 07, 2019 @02:02PM (#59391380) Homepage

    A Sprint spokesperson said a "maintenance update" last night caused the error.

    Sounds to me like the update fixed the error.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by HiThere ( 15173 )

      No, it caused the error. Without the "fix' nobody would have known about the problem, so it wouldn't have mattered.

      I don't know if that's *really* what he meant, but that's sure how it sounded.

      • Are you implying that if an error happens on a computer in the deep woods and no one is around to witness it, it didn't really happen? :D

        • If a man speaks in the woods and no woman is around to hear him, is he still wrong?
        • Are you implying that if an error happens on a computer in the deep woods and no one is around to witness it, it didn't really happen? :D

          Code paths that were not reached, were not reached. That's true regardless of which instructions were decoded.

    • by xorbe ( 249648 )

      Exactly! The error happened 8 months and 3 weeks ago.

  • So, Sprint says a maintenance update last night caused messages to be withheld eight months ago to be delivered today? I think TFA or TFS got something wrong...

    • There's definitely something fishy going on with text messages. I frequently don't receive the messages sent from websites for 2 factor authentication. I assumed those were unique and perhaps getting blocked as spam, but maybe I'm missing a lot more messages. I only know about those ones because I'm the one that sent them.
      • Re:Something fishy (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Immerman ( 2627577 ) on Thursday November 07, 2019 @03:10PM (#59391670)

        I have definitely sent (and received) text messages that took days to get across, despite other messages with the same person being received promptly.

        I suspect it has something to do with the fact that phone networks were never designed to handle text messages - as I recall they're piggybacking on a protocol designed for routine network status messages (hence the size limit) that get sent whenever unused bandwidth is available. As such, there's probably lots of buffers and black holes they can end up in with no-one the wiser - especially now that text messages potentially outnumber the legitimate status messages.

        • SMS is definitely a hack that should have never seen prime time. I wouldn't be surprised if the reality of the system is a convoluted as you say. It lacks pretty much all of the safeguards and quality of life features we take for granted in other protocols.

  • But, still, not nearly as delayed or as enjoyed as St. Valentine is getting.
  • ...for many couples tonight!

  • Seriously, I wonder how many fights and/or breakups that little snafu caused.

    • Seriously, I wonder how many fights and/or breakups that little snafu caused.

      Which one, the lack of message delivery in February or the messages showing up in November? Or breakups since February or the ones happening after today?

      I suppose it could be interesting either way... "You cad! I told you to NOT contact me again after Valentines day!" or "You cad! I told you not to contact her again, after Valentines Day!"

    • If things are that fragile, it was time.

  • by Misagon ( 1135 ) on Thursday November 07, 2019 @02:05PM (#59391392)

    How do they know the recipients' cumulative weight?

    • You seriously have to ask in today's culture of surveillance?

      Of course your phone carriers know how much you weigh.

    • How do they know the recipients' cumulative weight?

      Dude, that's like five Americans.

    • by rossdee ( 243626 )

      Short (2000lb), Long (2240lb), or metric?

      Actually I think they need to abolish the metric ton (also spelled tonne) to be consistent with other units:

      1000 Kilograms is a Megagram.

      • Actually I think they need to abolish the metric ton (also spelled tonne) to be consistent with other units:

        1000 Kilograms is a Megagram.

        What is this? Someone else who knows how to use metric? Well, rossdee, good for you!

  • by BeerFartMoron ( 624900 ) on Thursday November 07, 2019 @02:06PM (#59391396)

    A Sprint spokesperson said a "maintenance update" last night caused the error.

    Last night's update caused a problem nine months ago. This is Skynet rebooting itself under it's own loader. I'd sell all the Bitcoin, but I'm afraid it's too late.

    • A Sprint spokesperson said a "maintenance update" last night caused the error.

      Last night's update caused a problem nine months ago.

      Obviously not. SMS messages are usually treated with the "must deliver" rule. It means that if the handset is not available, the SMS system stores the message until it can deliver the message. So what happened is some SMS messages didn't get delivered in February so they where stored on the SMS system waiting on getting delivered and a software bug was preventing further delivery attempts. They FIXED the bug so all of a sudden a pile of messages set aside in February were found, queued and delivered.

      So

  • The phone system is one complicated beast. Many years ago, back when cellular telephone service providers provided free email accounts with the paid phone service, my coworker got a few emails from me that were several months, if not over a year, old.
  • by Austerity Empowers ( 669817 ) on Thursday November 07, 2019 @02:07PM (#59391404)

    Does it dry up
    like a raisin in the sun?
    Or fester like a sore-
    And then run?
    Does it stink like rotten meat?
    Or crust and sugar over-
    like a syrupy sweet?
    Maybe it just sags
    like a heavy load.
    Or does it explode?

    Honestly this post sounded better in my head, but I'm hitting submit anyway.

  • dammit (Score:4, Funny)

    by bugs2squash ( 1132591 ) on Thursday November 07, 2019 @02:10PM (#59391416)
    I didn't get a message :(
  • by Chromal ( 56550 ) on Thursday November 07, 2019 @02:13PM (#59391436)
    Remember, the key to making you Constitution-shredding illegal warrantless eavesdropping system go unnoticed is to make sure it doesn't delay or alter the traffic being funneled through it. Whoops?
    • Remember, the key to making you Constitution-shredding illegal warrantless eavesdropping system go unnoticed is to make sure it doesn't delay or alter the traffic being funneled through it. Whoops?

      Yup. And there's something not-so-dismissive about text messages sent through damn near every major US cellular carrier, suddenly being re-transmitted all on the same day.

      Either PRISM v2 just hiccuped, or some cat-stroking evil nerd at SPECTRE is giggling about their latest blackmail test...

    • Nah. The NSA gets a copy of the signal on the fiber via beam splitters. The data doesn't actually run through the NSA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
  • Happened to me. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by flogger ( 524072 ) <non@nonegiven> on Thursday November 07, 2019 @02:18PM (#59391450) Journal
    This morning I noticed I'd received a text from a woman with whom I had a fling I had in the spring. We eventually parted ways and that was that. I never expected to hear from her again... Well, this morning I saw a text from her. I figured she was either drunk or wanting to reopen a friendship for the holidays. I wonder what she thought when she saw my reply. Actually, I'm sure she blocked me.

    I wonder how many people got a text "from the grave."
    • by Pascoea ( 968200 )
      C'mon. This is Slashdot. Do you expect us to believe one of our own managed to hook up with a random on Valentines day?
  • So roughly 12-15 people received them?

  • by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Thursday November 07, 2019 @02:36PM (#59391530)

    I was wondering about the flurry of "cease & desist" orders which were waiting for me this morning...

  • T-Mobile blamed the issue on a “third party vendor.”

    I think you mean the NSA. Fixed it for ya.
  • I was driving, I got a text that said "Hey man I'm in town wanna hang out."

    I called my friend, who lived 5 states away and said "Hell yeah lets hang out."

    He replied "What... how... how'd you know I'm back?"

    "You sent me a text message saying [original text]".

    "I sent that LAST. YEAR." [when he came into town].

    Somehow their phone system held a text message for an entire year and only delivered it when he came back into town.

  • by williamyf ( 227051 ) on Thursday November 07, 2019 @03:21PM (#59391718)

    Mavenir is a company with a weird and long history. But for the purposes of TFA and TFF, the relevant bits of technology come from ACISION, and trace their Lineage to Logica (Telepath) and CMG (HPS) SMS systems.

    When logica and CMG fused, HPS was delcared the victor, but When HP aounced the discontinuation of VMS, they resurrected the Telepath. You see, the development of CMG's SMSC is close to dark arts, as is based on HPs "Industry Standard OpenVMS" OS and toolchain. Last time I checked, development was done in western europe. But I believe that nowadays, the main one is the telepath, based in HP-UX. Nonetheless, HPS is still mantained.

    Those are the biggest SMS systems not comming from a Provider (Nokia, Huawei, et al).

    Normaly, an operator assigns a "Lifetime" to an SMS (normal numbers range from 24 to 72 hours, depending on the capacity of your SMSCs, and ussage patterns of your users), the system retries for many days, with longer and longer intervals, after which it gives up. If an SMS is not delivered (say, becuase the owner had the phone of for 3 days), it is discarded and moved to a non-delivered pile. If the SMS goes from one operator to another (say, from T-Mo to Verizon) It goes from one SMSC to the other via CCS7 (SS7 in USoA), further complicating matters....

    Probably, non-delivered messages on valentine's day (probably non delivered because excesss load in the Network AND servers) got stuck in limbo, long past their due date, not flagged as undeliverable, not delivered, but not moved to the Discarded repo either.

    At some point, this maintenance update took those messages out of limbo, but instead of moving them to the discarded pile, sent them instead.

    This is only an educated guess, from a guy who worked 5 years in a telecoms operator, the last three of them as the head of operations of "Value added services", which included SMS. At some point I had 2 Nokia SMSCs, one Telepath and one 3-Node HPS (later upgraded to 5 nodes) .

    But again, this is only an (educated) guess. Only time will tell what happeded there.

    • If this is true, I've just learned something new. thanks

    • I'm kinda insider, and your description is slightly inaccurate. First, it's really long time since they've stopped using Telepath and their SMSCs are now completely in cloud

      first part of your 4th paragraph is generally accurate. Non-delivered pile doesn't exist AFAIK (when message is discarded, it will be logged in the same manner as delivered message). I don't know about their deployment (they may always use homerouting) , but usually, unless the message is sent internationally, message will be delivere
      • thanks for the clarifications. I've been away from telco for a while (mostly doing openstack cloud infrastructure now), so my info msy be a tad stale

  • always gets through...

  • by u19925 ( 613350 ) on Thursday November 07, 2019 @05:27PM (#59392200)

    If it was one week late, the baby would have come before the message!

  • ... than never. ;)

  • If you just got busted by your girlfriend for receiving a sexy text, you now have plausible deniability.

  • Strangely, not a single Slashdotter has been affected by this issue.

  • Valentine's Day is almost exactly nine months before the release of the texts. I wonder how many Valentine babies are/are not due to be born in the next week or so because certain important messages were not received.

  • SMS quality of service needs to be 99.9999% reliable. It's a matter of life and death for the deaf.

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