It’s a story tailor-made for the fear-mongering subset of news media. This week, a pair of gentlemen lured an unsuspecting virgin iPhone to a malicious website and — with no other input from the user — stole the phone’s entire database of sent, received and even deleted text messages in under 20 seconds, boasting that they could easily lift personal contacts, emails and your naughty, naughty photos as well. Thankfully for us level-headed souls, those gentlemen were Vincenzo Iozzo and Ralf-Philipp Weinmann, security researchers performing for the 2010 Pwn2Own hacking contest, and their $15,000 first prize ensures that the winning formula will go to Apple (and only Apple) for further study. Last year, smartphones emerged from Pwn2Own unscathed even as their desktop counterparts took a beating , but this makes the third year in a row that Safari’s gotten its host machines pwned .

A Winnipeg man has been dumped by his girlfriend of two and a half years, after she found his phone riddled with sext messages. Only problem? He didn’t write any of them. Virgin Mobile did. Apparently the cheeky monkeys over at Virgin Mobile had pre-loaded a number of suggestive text messages into at least one Samsung model, ranging from the relatively innocuous “Be there soon” to the crystal clear “Booty call.” When the wrongly accused man’s girlfriend found them, she naturally assumed she was a cuckholded Canuck.

There’s not exactly much in the way of official statements on the matter just yet, but it looks like support forums have been piling up with reports of text messaging problems on the HTC Hero over the past few weeks, and with no signs of a fix in sight. Apparently, the phone can send texts just fine, but runs into a little trouble when it comes to receiving ‘em, with most folks reporting only intermittent problems, and at least some not receiving any at all. Interestingly, the problem seems to be occurring in both the US and the UK, so it would seem to be a problem on the phone’s end and not the carrier’s, and a few people seem to have had some (brief) success after resetting the device. Of course, there are also plenty of folks having no problems at all, but there doesn’t seem to be any question that the issue is out there. So, have you been missing some texts on your Hero? Let us know in comments.

This Ping app by the guy who made PushGmail is a mix between text messaging and instant messaging . What you need to know is that it’s free and it’s fast. Ping is designed to look like the SMS app, and behaves much the same way. The messages you send arrive at the recipient’s screen instantly—similar to IMs—but also pop up with a Push Notification if you’re not actively using the phone. It’s basically free SMS for you to everyone who has an iPhone or iPod Touch (over Wi-Fi) as long as you can convince them to sign up for Ping

It’s a bit surprising that even with the worldwide prevalence of text messaging , the first 911 call center to support SMS just opened yesterday in Iowa. Unfortunately, the system is still fairly imperfect. You see, only subscribers to i wireless, a local T-Mobile affiliate, can text message 911. And it only works within Black Hawk County since just one call center has received the upgrade. But it gets even worse.

In case you haven’t been apprised of the situation, your addiction to texting and email is ruining your relationship… with god. According to Vincent Nichols, head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, modern friendships built around (or involving) heavy SMS volley, electronic mail correspondences, and social networking sites create “transient relationships” which put users at the risk of suicide. Yes, suicide . According to the British man of the cloth, using electronic communication to build friendships is causing humanity to lose “the ability to build interpersonal communication that’s necessary for living together.” Sure, it may sound like heavy FUD talk, but there is sense in some of his points. For instance, the Archbishop of Westminster believes that social networking sites encourage people to concentrate on their number of friends rather than build actual relationships, and they tend to view that number as a commodity

Remember that alleged SMS-based security hole on the iPhone allowing evil-doers to execute arbitrary code and do all sorts of nasty crap like create an army of mobile zombies ready and willing to execute a DoS attack? The guy who found it, security expert Charlie Miller, said that he’d reveal the details of it at Black Hat — and Black Hat’s this week. Sure enough, Miller and his cohorts plan to unleash details of the hack today, and while they claim they informed Apple of the problem over a month ago, Cupertino’s yet to make a move. We’d stop short of suggesting iPhone owners all turn off their handsets and take themselves firmly off the grid and into a completely disconnected underground bunker the moment the attack becomes public, but if it’s as serious as Miller claims, it definitely bumps up the pressure on Apple to get a fix out on the double — preferably before 3.1 drops. Filed under: Cellphones , Handhelds SMS vulnerability on iPhone to be revealed today, still isn’t patched originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 30 Jul 2009 03:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds

Though 14 states have already banned text messaging while driving, the Senate introduced a bill today that would essentially force the remaining states to pass a similar bill—despite there being no good way to enforce such a ban. Several different teams have done research showing that texting while driving is at least as dangerous as drunk driving and significantly more dangerous than talking on the phone while driving. The most interesting conclusion found that someone texting while driving is about eight times more likely to cause an accident than someone not texting, while a driver with a blood alcohol percentage of 0.08%, the legal limit, is only four times more likely than a sober driver. The bill would force each state’s highway department to institute a ban on texting within two years, or lose 25% of their federal funding each year, which is enough to cripple a highway department. Some weren’t thrilled, pointing out that nobody’s figured a way to enforce this kind of law, but we’ll have to see if the Senate passes the bill to find out if anyone has real objections. [ NY Times ]

The New York Times ‘ David Pogue has a great story condemning Congress for trying to outlaw exclusivity contracts instead of implementing changes in the cellphone industry that would actually benefit consumers. Down with those outlandish, unfair fees! Pogue’s mainly concerned with the silly fees levied on consumers for certain actions despite said actions not costing carriers hardly any money at all (text messaging, we’re looking at you). One that we didn’t even realize is the sneaky tactic of keeping users on the line for extra time to hear inane instructions like “When you’re done recording your message, you may hang up.” If you’re out of minutes, your carrier is actually going to charge you to listen to those! That’s worthy of a good fist-shake, or better yet, some Congressional intervention. [ New York Times ]

Seriously Apple , what’s up with the patent application bender? Over the past week, we’ve seen a whole gaggle of new apps , though the latest few just might be the most intriguing. In essence, Apple engineers have outlined plans to integrate object recognition, face detection / recognition, a text message filter (for the parents, you know) and a new, smarter messaging interface that could remind you of unread messages before allowing you to make a call and spout off unnecessarily. Moreover, we’re told of a new voice output selection that could enable Oprah or Cookie Monster to read your turn-by-turn directions, bedtime stories or recipes. Suddenly, iPhone OS 3.0 feels so..