Text message hoax causes financial panic in India

[AmishGangsta]

"Thursday an SMS went out to thousands of market players across India. It said that the left had withdrawn support from the government and the news will hit the headlines in 45 minutes."

http://www.ndtvprofit.com/homepage/storybusinessnew.asp?id=40224&template=&cache=8/23/2007%208:53:39%20PM

If it's this easy to create chaos with a text hoax, we're all in trouble...

[rbcp]

Isn't India the place where someone was sending a text message to everyone telling them if they didn't do something they would die?  And nearly everyone fell for it?  Those people are gullible.

[AmishGangsta]

Isn't India the place where someone was sending a text message to everyone telling them if they didn't do something they would die?  And nearly everyone fell for it?  Those people are gullible.

I don't know about that situation, but in searching for a news article about it I found this little nugget dealing with pranks pulled by our fellow phreaks in the "religion of peace."

[Zazen]

Isn't India the place where someone was sending a text message to everyone telling them if they didn't do something they would die?  And nearly everyone fell for it?  Those people are gullible.

Happens in China a lot. They had a rumor that the bananas were diseased, it caused millions of dollars in losses to their banana industry. Apparently the rumors are easy to create there because the regular media is so heavily censored that people rely on word of mouth for "real" news.