(keitai-l) Re: FYI: NTT DoCoMo Warns Users Of Prank E-Mail On Cell Phones

From: Ben Hutchings <ben.hutchings_at_roundpoint.com>
Date: 06/14/01
Message-ID: <F65A2A377C3E4946A06EAA95F32CCA5801F181@saturn.roundpoint.co.uk>
Kyle Barrow wrote:
> Thursday, June 14, 2001
> NTT DoCoMo Warns Users Of Prank E-Mail On Cell Phones
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--76 
> TOKYO (Nikkei)--NTT DoCoMo Inc. (9437) announced Wednesday it will
> implement measures against prank e-mail messages sent to cellular
> phones under its i-mode Internet access service.  Some prank e-mail
> messages contain special commands that automatically call the police
> or other parties when users open them.  Some commands in such
> messages disable the phones in some way.  NTT DoCoMo says it will
> warn users not to open messages from unknown persons on its Web site
> and in monthly bills. Its new cell phone models to be marketed in
> July will come with a program to prevent prank e-mail commands from
> functioning.
> (The Nikkei Business Daily Thursday edition)
> 
> Not sure how this is possible without any scripting language, or is
> there one we just don't know about?

In the archive I found a report posted by Juergen:
<http://www.appelsiini.net/keitai-l/archives/2000-08/0354.html>.  The
replies to this gave some details, which were that the emails included
an (obscured) link to the emergency telephone number.  How to include
such a link in an email?  Ren wrote that on certain handsets you can
cause an email to be interpreted as HTML by putting "</XPLAINTEXT>" at
the beginning.  (This sort of implies that those handsets use the
browser software to show emails, and insert a magic tag at the
beginning that *almost* disables markup in the email.)

An alternative explanation was that a plain text email could contain
an (apparently harmless) http URL that links to a page that in turn
contains a link to a tel URL.

What happens if a page has an <img> tag that uses a tel URL?  Does the
browser treat the image as broken, or does it behave as if the user
selected an <a> link to the URL?

I thought that newer handsets would always display the number given
in a tel link and prompt for confirmation before actually dialling.
Is this not correct?

[ Did you check the archives?   http://www.appelsiini.net/keitai-l/ ]
Received on Thu Jun 14 05:21:21 2001