Really doubt it's fake. A few years ago I got a random text from an acquaintance that said something out of context. I responded and she replied she had no clue what I was talking about.
After googling it turned out that there had been some kind of glitch where select text messages from almost a year prior were "sent again" by carriers. Affecting very few people, but apparently enough to make industry news and of course I had been effected. Sure enough it was a message I had previously received that (in context) made perfect sense.
So I believe that kind of stuff happens. Probably as simple as some backend data engineer running the wrong script.
A similar thing happened to me at work, where we use O365 for mail (not my choice). One day lots of people starting getting mail that was sent about a year previously and not received until then (not resends as in your case). As an aside, O365 is easily the worst mail system I've ever personally used, by far, in about 25 years of email.
This happened to me last year! I received a text message from someone which, pre-pandemic was totally innocuous, but during pandemic seemed totally reckless and crazy, and I got really angry before realizing that it was a resend from long ago. Oops.
Storage actually makes SMS worse (because it lacks delivery guarantees). Not only may a message be dropped, it may arrive a year later, or be duplicated and arrive much later.
Twice in the past, my FaceTime connected to someone I didn't know. I immediately hung up & got the right person on the 2nd try. Both times, I initiated the call from a Hilton. I submitted a report in Feedback assistant for both incidents.
Comments
Really doubt it's fake. A few years ago I got a random text from an acquaintance that said something out of context. I responded and she replied she had no clue what I was talking about.
After googling it turned out that there had been some kind of glitch where select text messages from almost a year prior were "sent again" by carriers. Affecting very few people, but apparently enough to make industry news and of course I had been effected. Sure enough it was a message I had previously received that (in context) made perfect sense.
So I believe that kind of stuff happens. Probably as simple as some backend data engineer running the wrong script.
A similar thing happened to me at work, where we use O365 for mail (not my choice). One day lots of people starting getting mail that was sent about a year previously and not received until then (not resends as in your case). As an aside, O365 is easily the worst mail system I've ever personally used, by far, in about 25 years of email.
This happened to me last year! I received a text message from someone which, pre-pandemic was totally innocuous, but during pandemic seemed totally reckless and crazy, and I got really angry before realizing that it was a resend from long ago. Oops.
Reminds me of
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21486124
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21474961
SMS is like UDP, but less reliable. No delivery or ordering guarantee, messages may be stored and sent (re-sent) later.
How is that less reliable? UDP has no delivery or ordering guarantee and no storage.
Storage actually makes SMS worse (because it lacks delivery guarantees). Not only may a message be dropped, it may arrive a year later, or be duplicated and arrive much later.
There is delivery confirmation.
Twice in the past, my FaceTime connected to someone I didn't know. I immediately hung up & got the right person on the 2nd try. Both times, I initiated the call from a Hilton. I submitted a report in Feedback assistant for both incidents.