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A text craze called "Buddy" which texts information about yourself, or others, has Hastings woman Rowena Benge "freaked out".
After talking to a friend in Australia who had used the texting service, where you text your name and suburb to 2230, Ms Benge was curious to see what kind of information it would reveal.
Expecting nothing more than general information she was shocked when it texted back with "quite a personal response".
"My mate told me about it and I was curious. I thought it'd just tell me horoscope type stuff but I got a reply saying 'Buddy knows Rowena Benge is a very stunning 22-year- old who loves her family and mates, and most of all loves to dance, is good mates with Chris and Mark' ," Ms Benge said.
Refusing to believe "Buddy" could know this information she decided to test it again, despite each text costing $3. It replied: "Buddy knows Rowena Benge is quite a party animal, was the naughtiest kid in the sandpit at Camberley Kindy, has gorgeous blonde hair, always smiling."
So did Buddy get it right?
"Yeah, I love to dance and I did ballet for 10 years. I did go to Camberley Kindy, not so sure about the naughty part though," Ms Benge said.
She said information such as "blonde, very stunning" could have been a stab in the dark, but it was the information about her friends Chris and Mark that shocked her as she wondered how Buddy knew specific friends.
"They're not only my friends they are brothers who now live in Australia, how would it know that?" she said.
Will Garbutt from Need a Nerd said services such as Buddy would most likely use specific software that searched the internet for information.
"There's a type of software called maltago which will scan all search engines such as Google and Yahoo, phone directories and social networks like Bebo and Facebook. It then pumps out all the information in a few seconds," Mr Garbutt said.
"The more information you provide, the more accurate it will be. That's probably why the Buddy service asks for your suburb. They would have workers that then put this into text form."
Although Ms Benge is a member on several social networks she was concerned with the security level of her privacy.
"Some of the information in the texts isn't clear on my [social network] pages such as the Chris and Mark comment. There's nothing on my page that identifies them as brothers or even friends.
"Any weirdo could text my name and find out information about me, it's a scary thought knowing people can do that."
However, an email from Buddy Manager Rupert I said: "All the information is collected from publicly available resources."
- HAWKES BAY TODAY
