BlackBerry helps UK's rioters

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BlackBerry helps UK's rioters

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BBM service offers a free alternative to texting and can send messages to many people at once.

10 August,2011 10:58 pm

The rioters causing havoc on British streets have eschewed traditional social networking sites as a way of organising, instead using the encrypted instant chat service on their BlackBerry handsets.Although BlackBerrys are normally associated with white-collar workers keeping up with their emails, they are used by 37 percent of young adults and children in Britain, according to recent industry figures.They are popular because the BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) service offers a free alternative to texting and can send messages to many people at once.“If you use Blackberry Messenger it’s usually just you or your local group of contacts youve personally approved who can see your messages. That’s why they’ve been preferring to use it, said Alastair Paterson, chief executive of cyber security firm Digital Shadows.He said social media had proved “a very efficient tool for communicating, being able to effectively outwit the police by very quickly allowing them to move between areas that they know the police havent been to yet”.