Russian Terrorist Bomber Thwarted by Spam

Spam is not only annoying, but costs billions every year to fight it. But in this one case, spam might have saved hundreds of lives.

Violent extremists detonate suicide bombs via text messages, wired to disposable cell phones. When the bomber is just in the right place where they can do the most harm, someone else from remote sends them a text to explode the bomb.

The thing is you have to keep your phone off until the right moment, otherwise your bomb might explode and kill all your co-conspirators.

According to The Telegraph, Russian authorities believe a would-be suicide bomber did not follow this advice so well:

The unnamed woman, who is thought to be part of the same group that struck Moscow’s Domodedovo airport on Monday, intended to detonate a suicide belt on a busy square near Red Square on New Year’s Eve in an attack that could have killed hundreds. Security sources believe a spam message from her mobile phone operator wishing her a happy new year received just hours before the planned attack triggered her suicide belt, killing her but nobody else.

What a country! In Russia, spam delete you.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 30th, 2011 at 4:53 pm and is filed under News & Rumors. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.