Autoresponding SMS applications

If you plan to create an autoresponding SMS service, you must give a thought to the following scenario. Autoresponding SMS services threaten each other, and can cause serious problems for the operators and the service providers. If a user sends an SMS message from an SMS service, that responds to incoming messages automatically, to another service that behaves the same way, the two services can get in an endless loop causing infinite costs for the service providers.

Figure 1 illustrates this issue in more detail. As you can see on the figure the process is initiated by a human user sending an SMS message from a service called "Other autoresponding SMS application". The SMS arrives to Ozeki Messages Server, that responds automatically. The response generated by Ozeki Message Server is then received by the "Other autoresponding SMS application" that may not interpret it and may generate a response SMS, creating an endless loop.

two text message applications in an endless loop
Figure 1 - Two SMS applications in an endless loop

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