Three Days ago when i was just checking my email, one of my friends told me that picking a specific mobile call can cause death so don’t pick any call having some annonymous number. I was just amazed at reading this info on my messenger. He added that television has casted a news regarding this claiming the death of some people who had answered to some unknown callers.

This rumor was spread via a text message which was probably forwarded by most of people as a funny thing or some did it to ’secure’ their loved ones. Actual text that i came to know was:

“Don’t pick any call of *88888888 as its some type of a virus which damage the brains cells and kills persons. As some high tone sound or some thing produce when u pick the calls it damage or burst he brain in few seconds”

The rumor was so effective that some mosques in the country’s biggest city, Karachi, made announcements that people were being killed by a mobile virus and they must not use their mobiles. Call centers of all the operators (Mobilink, Ufone, Telenor, Warid, Paktel) were bombarded with the same question whether this is true or not???

Even a local newspaper published that it is a revenge of some ghosts who are angry at telecom boom because some of BTS (Base Tranciever Stations, tower in simple words) were erected in some graveyard!

All this is simply a stupid thing to forward and any body recieving such a message must not forward that to others because it just makes a chain process and this is one of SMS rumor spreading. Currently there are more than 52 million mobile users among 160 million people in Pakistan.

The cellular operators moved to calm down subscribers and said in a joint statement: “These rumors are completely baseless. They do not make any sense in technological terms.”