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KARACHI, April 13: Mobile service providers across the country were on Friday inundated by calls from subscribers worried by a prank message that they could die of a deadly virus being transmitted via their phones.
The rumour was so effective that some mosques in Karachi made announcements that people were being killed by a mobile virus and they should be aware of God's wrath.
In a prank reminiscent of the plot in a hit Hollywood movie, `The Ring’, in which people die within a week after watching a video, the prankster warned users that a deadly virus transmitted through phones had killed 20 people.
There are more than 52 million mobile users in the country.
Farah Hussain, a spokeswoman for Warid Telecom, said that their customer service centres had been inundated with panicky subscribers inquiring about the so-called virus.
The cellular operators moved to calm down subscribers and said in a joint statement: “These rumours are completely baseless. They do not make any sense in technological terms.” — Agencies
Our correspondent in Lahore adds: The fear of contracting a deadly cell phone virus gripped the city on Friday as Rescue 1122 received over a hundred such complaints. "The callers told us that a man has fallen unconscious and blood was oozing out from his mouth and nose after receiving a call on the cell phone. The rescue teams responded to a few calls, which turned out to be hoax. Thereafter, we decided not to take them seriously," a Rescue 1122 official told Dawn.
A number of people also contacted cell phone companies and the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) to inquire about the rumors.
The rumours were so strong that most people preferred not to take calls on cell phones, especially those that came from unknown numbers.
Announcements were also made from some mosques in areas such as Chungi Amer Sadhu, Kahna and Chuhng advising people to refrain from using their cell phones. They warned the people that the `deadly virus’ could kill them.
A large number of people sent SMSes to their families, relatives and friends urging them not to receive calls from anonymous numbers or the ones starting with certain digits.
Dismissing the rumors as baseless, the PTA’s Punjab chief, Col (retd) Nayyar Hassan, said there was no cell phone virus that could harm the human body. “There has never been a virus that could affect humans through cell phones. Viruses are programmes that affect software and operating systems.”
Mobile phone companies also expressed concern, saying the rumors were absurd and showed ignorance of the people. “The rumours sprang from Daska a couple of days ago when someone came out with a theory that a company has erected a tower in the graveyard. This annoyed the dead, who reacted by sending deadly virus through anonymous calls,” said a company official.
