Hospital Authority's announcement on wrong delivery of SMS message
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The Hospital Authority (HA) made the following announcement today (August 10) regarding the wrong delivery of SMS message:
During the system trial of automatic delivery of SMS messages this afternoon, the HA wrongly sent the test messages to around 3 000 phone numbers. It is estimated that the SMS message has been delivered to more than 1 500 phone numbers.
The SMS message was sent through the system automatically at around 3.45pm this afternoon. The phone number for sending the SMS message was 5207 0488. The content of the SMS message was to notify the patients the cancellation of their medical appointment. The SMS message also contained two enquiry numbers, which are 3123 4567 and 2020 0809.
Members of the public who received SMS message sent from the abovementioned phone number should ignore the content of the message nor call to check the number. The SMS message is only a test message mistakenly sent by the computer system.
The phone numbers for receiving the SMS messages was randomly generated by a computer programme and do not involve any HA patient's personal information. After preliminary investigation, the HA believed that the incident was due to a wrong procedure in the system trial.
The HA is working with the telecommunication operator to stop the remaining undelivered SMS messages. The HA expresses apology to members of public being affected by the incident.
Ends/Monday, August 10, 2020
Issued at HKT 21:27
Issued at HKT 21:27
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