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This story has popped up on my feed several times but this is the first explanation I've seen as to what actually happened:
How one company you’ve never heard of swallowed tens of thousands of text messages — then spit them back out
How one company you’ve never heard of swallowed tens of thousands of text messages — then spit them back out
Syniverse became a mobile services linchpin through acquisitions and alleged hardball tactics
By Jacob Kastrenakes@jake_k Nov 21, 2019, 8:45am EST
Illustration by Alex Castro
On November 7th, tens of thousands of people across the US woke up to strange text messages from friends and loved ones, occasionally from people who were no longer in their lives, like an ex-boyfriend or a best friend who had recently died. The messages had actually been sent months earlier, on Valentine’s Day, but had been frozen in place by a glitched server and were only shot out when the system was finally fixed nine months later, in the middle of the night.
It was a puzzling moment, but even more puzzling was the company behind it: a Tampa, Florida-based provider of backend services for wireless carriers called Syniverse. Most people had never heard of the company and had no idea it was handling some of their most private and personal messages. In fact, nearly every wireless carrier in the US relies on Syniverse in one way or another — and it’s so entrenched that, even after a major screwup like this one, its partners have no option but to carry on with their partnerships.
AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint all rely on Syniverse to route messages
For about two decades now, wireless carriers in the US have used third parties like Syniverse to route text messages between networks. If an AT&T customer wants to send a message to another AT&T customer, it’s simple: AT&T can just move the message itself. But if an AT&T customer wants to send a message to a Sprint customer, a third-party company needs to take on the work of translating AT&T’s message into Sprint’s protocol, and physically routing it from one network to the other. And thanks to some canny buyouts and years of ruthless competition, the vast majority of that work is now done by Syniverse.
AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint currently use Syniverse to route text messages to people on other networks, according to data available to Tyntec, a smaller messaging services company that spoke with The Verge. T-Mobile confirmed that it uses Syniverse, AT&T declined to comment, and Sprint did not respond to a request for comment. Verizon confirmed that it uses a competitor, SAP.
With those three carriers as customers, Syniverse is responsible for delivering 600 billion messages every month.
It’s a wonder then that the number of stuck messages wasn’t far higher. Syniverse initially said that around 168,000 texts were caught on its server — roughly half a second’s worth of messaging. If each one of those messages impacted a different sender and receiver, more than a quarter million people would have been affected by this mistake.
“There should be multiple verifications all along that should have avoided that.”
Experts who spoke with The Verge said that Syniverse’s explanation of what happened — that a server went down and was only reconnected nine months later — is plausible, but that the scenario still involves Syniverse royally screwing up. Any server being reconnected should have been “cleaned” first, ensuring that no lingering messages were waiting inside it, according to two people with technical knowledge of how SMS messaging systems work.
Syniverse became a mobile services linchpin through acquisitions and alleged hardball tactics
By Jacob Kastrenakes@jake_k Nov 21, 2019, 8:45am EST
Illustration by Alex Castro
On November 7th, tens of thousands of people across the US woke up to strange text messages from friends and loved ones, occasionally from people who were no longer in their lives, like an ex-boyfriend or a best friend who had recently died. The messages had actually been sent months earlier, on Valentine’s Day, but had been frozen in place by a glitched server and were only shot out when the system was finally fixed nine months later, in the middle of the night.
It was a puzzling moment, but even more puzzling was the company behind it: a Tampa, Florida-based provider of backend services for wireless carriers called Syniverse. Most people had never heard of the company and had no idea it was handling some of their most private and personal messages. In fact, nearly every wireless carrier in the US relies on Syniverse in one way or another — and it’s so entrenched that, even after a major screwup like this one, its partners have no option but to carry on with their partnerships.
AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint all rely on Syniverse to route messages
For about two decades now, wireless carriers in the US have used third parties like Syniverse to route text messages between networks. If an AT&T customer wants to send a message to another AT&T customer, it’s simple: AT&T can just move the message itself. But if an AT&T customer wants to send a message to a Sprint customer, a third-party company needs to take on the work of translating AT&T’s message into Sprint’s protocol, and physically routing it from one network to the other. And thanks to some canny buyouts and years of ruthless competition, the vast majority of that work is now done by Syniverse.
AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint currently use Syniverse to route text messages to people on other networks, according to data available to Tyntec, a smaller messaging services company that spoke with The Verge. T-Mobile confirmed that it uses Syniverse, AT&T declined to comment, and Sprint did not respond to a request for comment. Verizon confirmed that it uses a competitor, SAP.
With those three carriers as customers, Syniverse is responsible for delivering 600 billion messages every month.
It’s a wonder then that the number of stuck messages wasn’t far higher. Syniverse initially said that around 168,000 texts were caught on its server — roughly half a second’s worth of messaging. If each one of those messages impacted a different sender and receiver, more than a quarter million people would have been affected by this mistake.
“There should be multiple verifications all along that should have avoided that.”
Experts who spoke with The Verge said that Syniverse’s explanation of what happened — that a server went down and was only reconnected nine months later — is plausible, but that the scenario still involves Syniverse royally screwing up. Any server being reconnected should have been “cleaned” first, ensuring that no lingering messages were waiting inside it, according to two people with technical knowledge of how SMS messaging systems work.
How one company you’ve never heard of swallowed tens of thousands of text messages — then spit them back out
