Sharpmail.co.uk - anonymous texting featured in The Observer

Congratulations to Danny Fletcher and team at sharpmail.co.uk. I bought The Observer today (a Sunday newspaper here in the UK) and saw a frontpage story about the service written by Lorna Martin.

Ever wanted to unite two love-lorn friends in a romantic tryst with a single, well-phrased text message?

That’s Lorna’s spin on the service – a good introduction for the general public. Although it will be interesting to see if there’s any outcry about the service.

Sharpmail’s PR have done an excellent job at minimising any potential outcry by having Danny quoted as saying that they keep a record of every message sent – and by whom – just in case there are any serious abuses.

That said, if you begin to consider the legal ramifications, you get stuck in quite a lot of ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’. One that has stumped the wife of a leading london Barrister, who, incidentally has a first class degree in law herself. I was trying to get her husband to give me a (free) legal perspective on the admissibility of text messages as evidence so I could publish it here. No luck – she’s a bit obsessed with babies to focus on important technical geekery 😉

Eventually I used my pigeon law experience to conclude that to my (potentially flawed) knowledge, text messages do not constitute appropriate notice for any legal transaction.

However one would imagine that if necessary a skilled barrister could convince a jury that text messages are so widespread as to be an acceptable for of communication.

The whole debate goes to pot when services such as Sharpmail are introduced to the equation because that demonstrates the insecure nature of the text medium. Anyone can be anyone!