Blank iPhone Texts from 1969 and 2012
Apple April 23rd, 2009I looked at my phone and saw a missed call and a text message from a blank phone number. I was incredibly confused!
Soon thereafter, I checked the voice mail, and I got another text message from blank phone number, with blank content!
It looked a little something like this:
December 31, 1969 5:59 PM? September 4, 2012 6:10 PM? I feel like I’m being given a secret code!
I googled to no avail. But, I searched MacRumors, and according to a post in a thread regarding this very topic:
The network sends a notification from the tower to the phone to send a v-mail notification and then when you check your voice mail it sends another notification to your phone and then it would say on your iPhone that you no longer have a new vmail. but because of the fact thats its not a TMOBILE PHONE that the signal is sent differently to there exclusive phones. So not only the iPhone will be affected other unlocked phones will have similar problems.
Update:
A user at the hackint0sh forum called T-Mobile in a thread:
Apparently they have been making updates to their software in the T-mobile system over the past few weeks. Part of the updates they did were to the speed up the internet on the network, but in the process they screwed up the voicemail notifier settings. They told me it is not a priority to fix it since the problem is only happening on phones they do not currently offer.
…
The only solution for the time being is to have T-mobile disable the voicemail notification. In this case you will no longer receive any text messages or a dot indicator when you receive a voicemail.
Apparently, T-Mobile is working on this issue. Ack! Hope this helps, and that they can fix it soon!
Have you had any fun messages or a different timestamp? Have you found another thread mentioning this issue? Have you called T-Mobile? Let everyone know here in the comment section!
Continued confusion Current lifestamp: April 28, 2009, 9:20PM. Awaiting future self to discover content based texts, rather than blank whispers into the void.
We know that December 31, 1969 is the birth of UNIX timestamps (corresponding to the UNIX timestamp “1″). But what is the significance of September 4, 2012? My precise timestamp above converts to 1240971028. I’ve continued to receive Voicemail texts – all for September 4, 2012, but at more times: 7:14 PM, 10:04 PM, 11:16 PM – with no correlation to the actual time of either receipt of voicemail or checking. And, my initial message is the only one from 1969.
It also seems that if you had a voicemail red dot prior to the text messaging weirdness, you cannot get rid of it. Whatever voicemail state you were, you continue to be. This is because these blank texts are your voicemail notifications – and your iPhone doesn’t know how to process the new T-Mobile notifications. Anyone know how to get rid of the red dot, just for the sake of aesthetics? Let us know.
A quandary, no doubt. Lots of conspiracies in the comments. Any to add?
Good news!
I received missed call and voicemail at 11:52AM Central Time on April 30, 2009, and I received a Voicemail dot! That means no text message! And the Voicemail dot went away when I checked it. So looks like situation normal. Everyone rejoice.
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April 24th, 2009 at 1:42 am
yea i got 3 from dec 31 1969 659pm and then another 3 from sep4 2012 802pm. i noticed and i see it on yours too theres a short line in the blurp on the left
April 24th, 2009 at 8:03 am
That’s interesting, I had not noticed that. My blank texts have disappeared from my text messages.. have not restarted my phone. Very odd!
April 24th, 2009 at 10:44 pm
I got the same messages. I for sure I thought it was some kinda sign for the end of the world or some shit, freaked me out until I read this. I kinda wish it woulda been like aliens tho. I guess we all don’t get what we want.
April 26th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
This is happening to me too. Called Tmobile and they said its an issue with hardware, not their problem. But I took a sim card from another Tmobile phone that I have and the notification symbol for the voicemail worked fine. I’m going to go in to Tmobile tomorrow and getting a new sim card, hopefully that works. Like said above it doesn’t look like its a priority issue or that they care about iphone users, he just suggested to turn off the notification, but I figure a blank text from another year is better than not knowing that I have a voicemail. I hope they fix the problem and when they do figure out how to put the number of voicemail’s inside of the red dot like ATT users have.
April 26th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
It’s John Titor.
April 27th, 2009 at 12:26 am
Same thing here too, and I can tell you it is not coinciding with VM notifications.
Funny that the conspiracy queen is getting these, it was a hoot at the conference I was attending over the weekend. I have gotten 16 in total with different time signatures, but all from Sept. 4th, 2012 for each day approx. 70-75 minutes a part time wise each day since last Tuesday
December 31st, 1960 is “Before Unix”, I guess we’ll call it B.U. rather than BC, it’s a zero out default time, and Mac products default to this in a number of situations, low battery etc.
However, September 4th 2012 is ten days before the end of the Mayan calendar ( 9/14/12) when there is “suppose” to be some cataclysmic event which precipitates either the end of the world as we know it of a new era of unicorns and rainbows. You pick.
Me, I’m picking the DeLorean and getting back to the future and stockpiling guns and dry goods. It’s only happening to people with hacks and unlocked iPhones in my search, so I assume that were are recieving transmissions from the future from people that realize we are cheap and like good technology so we’re more likely to be cagey enough to survive the thinning of the heard.
I’ll be interested to hear what the bug actually is, but until then…….
April 27th, 2009 at 11:27 am
This is all very funny!!! Well everyone is saying that it has to do something with the voicemail. Well its true! Every time I receive a voicemail. I receive a blank message. The weird part is that it says the weird date September 4, 2012.
April 27th, 2009 at 8:49 pm
Guys all I have to say is be prepared for Sep 4, 2012. No one knows what exactly will happen but until then
good luck.
April 28th, 2009 at 12:49 am
the same things happened to my this weekend hasn’t happened since…i’ve been googleling the heck oh of the dates but nothing…be cool if it really was a sign!!
April 28th, 2009 at 10:51 am
Yeah on my iphone which has a T-mobile chip I got 1 text message about 3 days ago, it said nothing, and it was dated SEPTEMBER 4TH 2012 9:14PM really freaked me out I thought it was some end of the world thing. Hahaha I was looking up bible codes to see if any of them hinted at text messages.
April 28th, 2009 at 6:55 pm
Glad I found this…I was so freaked out by the phantom texts.
It also seems now everytime I get a voicemail it activates the empty texts. And I also can’t get the red dot to disappear from my voicemail button even when I have deleted all new voicemails.
April 28th, 2009 at 9:24 pm
This is great information, everybody! Note, most of us are getting blank texts on voicemail receipt and checking of voicemail. In fact, today I received blank text when calling my voicemail and once my voicemail picked up. Weirdness!
I too prefer to keep my notifications on. I wonder if I’ll receive a blank text if I receive a voicemail while my phone is turned off?
April 29th, 2009 at 5:48 am
Wow what a relife i was really beginning to worry about those text messeges cuz most of mine I got them when i was a sleep. the 1st one freaked me out the most because it woke me up from a crazy dream i had about the ression getting worse and all the shops in my city were close then a freakin text messege with the date Sep 4th 2021. 7:59PM came up. Yeah it was the talk of the week but i figure what is the best way to find out stuff than to google then i found this site and im at rest only think i cant figure is they come to me between 3:00am and 6:00am an i dont have any voice mails.
April 29th, 2009 at 6:12 am
To get rid of the red dot just turn off the phone and turn back on after you check messages
April 29th, 2009 at 10:27 am
thanx for all the good info. But when I get the strange texts, mine aren’t blank, they have the “@” symbol posted in the little bubble. So far I havnt cleared any of them. I’m up to 16 @ symbols in a row. The time stamp must all be the same b/c there is no new time/date stamp with each text. Just the @ symbol. Is n e 1 else getting this symbol? Or all they all blank? Thanx for N E replies!
April 29th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
I’m also receiving the @ message along with the 2012 date and the 1969 date. I have to admit it freaked me out too. I’m so glad I’m not the only one receiving texts from the future haha I wonder why my texts are not blank though like everyone elses. I actually tried to text back but the phone wouldn’t allow it. What can I say it was worth a try.
April 29th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
To those receiving messages with @ or other characters: do you know which version of the iPhone firmware you’re running? Is it 2.2? I’m trying to figure out what might cause a variance in the text content, and I can only think it might be a difference in how the individual iPhones are interpreting the voicemail notification from T-Mobile.
April 29th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
Yeah I’m pretty sure its 2.2 .
April 30th, 2009 at 8:16 am
Today I got another message from the blank number and it was dated
December 21st 2012 which is known to possibly be the end of the world, freaky I know!
This is so weird because I did not get a voicemail or anything it just came out of no where?
FREAKY!
April 30th, 2009 at 8:16 am
Today I got another message from the blank number and it was dated
December 21st 2012 which is known to possibly be the end of the world, freaky I know!
This is so weird because I did not get a voicemail or anything it just came out of no where?
FREAKY!
April 30th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
Today I got a voicemail at 11:52 central time and I received the voicemail dot, no text message. So it looks like they’ve fixed it – at least for my circuit. Anyone else back to situation normal?
April 30th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
I have not received a single VM during this whole debacle… Hehehe.. I have trained my friends well, they know to txt rather than leave a VM! ;-D
May 1st, 2009 at 3:06 pm
well i must say that i am guilty of trying to communicate with it i even named it ghost in my contacts, after reading all these messages i guess i’m not as special as i was pretending to be but i will say that i received over 60 and they have finally carried over to september 5 after almost 2 weeks of text,but just to not knock the idea of other dimensions i will say that they seem to only occur when i pick up and look at my phone so chew on that…
May 1st, 2009 at 3:07 pm
well i must say that i am guilty of trying to communicate with it i even named it ghost in my contacts, after reading all these messages i guess i’m not as special as i was pretending to be but i will say that i received over 60 and they have finally carried over to september 5 after almost 2 weeks of text,but just to not knock the idea of other dimensions i will say that they seem to only occur when i pick up and look at my phone so chew on that…
May 5th, 2009 at 6:31 pm
Following you on twitter, but don’t know how to let you know. I used to be so much better with computers when we hung out.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:52 am
go to the text message and then click call. When I did it it changed the wallpaper on my phone and took 2 screen shots which were saved in my photo album. Does it do the same for u?
May 7th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
I got these same texts but for different times. And a WHOLE bunch of them in a row. I got them all in one day and then never got another one. The times and dates weirded me out!So I finally googled them and came across this! I have the same thing an unlocked iPhone with Tmobile service. Tmobile is just annoying in general…. Thought I was discovering something cool. Guess not!
May 31st, 2009 at 8:58 pm
THE REASON FOR THIS IS BECAUSE EITHER THE SENDER OR THE RECEIVER HAS THE EMOJI CHARACTERS ACTIVATED ON THE IPHONE THIS CAN BE EASILY FIXED BY RESETING THE NETWORK SETTINGS ON THE IPHONE ON THE SENDER AND THE RECEIVER. TRY IT IT WORKS IT HAPPENED TO ME BUT NOW IT IS FIXED.
June 29th, 2009 at 7:08 pm
Its actually the leader of the human resistance, John Connor. You have all been chosen to fight for mankind!
October 20th, 2009 at 9:37 pm
I got the 2012 SMS too, but mine says !
I got pretty freaked out (especially because it is on top of my other messages and it says !) so I started looking in google to see what the date 2012 sep4 was
Mmmm I think I will keep the SMS so that I can send it back to myself on September 4 2012 at that time so that the world doesn’t blow up (u never know) until then it’s a pretty good story to freak people out.
December 6th, 2009 at 11:09 am
I do believe these text messages mean something, we have mis-information people on here also that try to down play the fact that they made a mistake and send out these dates…HA HA HA.
May 16th, 2010 at 3:52 pm
okay last night at the exact time of midnight like right when it turned midnight i got a txt message but it was blank there was nothing on it! it was sent from Dec. 31, 2012! at this point i didnt know what to think. so i googled it and i got this and i noticed that all of these other things were happening to people with iphones well i dont got an iphone nor is my phone tmobile and get this the number was a 12 digits with a + at the beginning of it!!!! A BIT FREAKY!!!!!!!!
May 19th, 2010 at 10:04 am
I got the 2012 SMS too, but mine says !
I got pretty freaked out (especially because it is on top of my other messages and it says !) so I started looking in google to see what the date 2012 sep4 was
Mmmm I think I will keep the SMS so that I can send it back to myself on September 4 2012 at that time so that the world doesn’t blow up (u never know) until then it’s a pretty good story to freak people out.
August 4th, 2010 at 11:20 am
I just got a blank text, with no voice mails or anything, no phone calls for days.
But my date is Feb 6, 2020 10:45 PM