Two researchers in the UK are looking into SMS messages to finger culprits in murder investigations. Their theory? That everyone has a unique SMS style, and with enough data they'll be able to ID people involved in crimes. They're not saying that criminals have a special method of texting, but rather that they can use forensics to figure out who sent particular SMS messages and when. So if a killer tries to frame someone else for her crime by sending bogus SMS messages from the victim's phone saying "Hlp, Bobby followin me," these forensics experts will be able to determine that the SMS wasn't in the victim's style and identify it as bogus.
Want to participate in the research? You can help by contributing your own SMS messages to the dataset that researchers Tim Grant and Kim Drake, psychologists at University of Leicester, are examining. They'll keep your information private, and use it to figure out whether it's common for texters to use similar constructions in their messages. I've been researching this for an article I'm doing for Wired about cell phone forensics -- apparently it's pretty common for criminals to send SMSes about what they've done, or to try to provide alibis for themselves with fake texts sent from other people's phones.
SMS as a Tool in Murder Investigations [via Cellular News]
