Mobile phone text authorship

what exactly the software mobile phone txt authorship is and how it is going to help the investigative agencies. is it complete or still in developing stage.

krishna m
forensic scientist

I think the software looks at a writing style and attempts to link it to an author…..

I thnk ur guna have ur wk cut out, wiv the abbrvs in mdrn txt spk

Thanks to those who have replied to my original post on the authorship software for mobile phone texts. It looks at the features across two text sets and details the degree of similarity between them. Here's a scenario where it can be used someone goes missing, and a few days later texts are sent from their phone. Use the software to compare the styles of the 'before' and 'after' stages - before the person went missing and after. This could be vital if the cops working the case need to make a quick decision regarding the status of the inquiry. At the moment the software is geared up for UK English, but with a bit of tweaking we could adapt it to US English. It wouldn't be that difficult. We welcome inquiries from serving police officers. You can check out our website at www.thetext.co.uk (I hope it's allowed to put a link here). We have been doing forensic authorship for many years. I should stress that the software is free of charge. There is no cost. The cops using it may need to contact a forensic linguist later, but this may help them at the investigative stage.

Greetings,

I was looking for this sort of tool to help determine authorship in email messages and forum postings about a year ago and couldn't find anything reliable. There was a lot of research but no real tools. Has this changed?

Also, given the low volume of text to work with, how reliable do you expect this tool to be?

-David

Hi David, Thanks for the interesting response. Ordinarily, short texts would pose a real problem for authorship identification/indication. However, personal mobile texts tend to be so individualistic and quirky that it is relatively easy to find differences between authorship styles. It's how you rate those differences that may present problems when giving evidence in court. However, if you would like a copy of the software email me and I'll send you a link.
John
forensicling2003 at yahoo co uk
(there are no spaces or dashes in the above and I'm sure you can figure out where the dots are).
We're also working on other electronic type texts - do let me know if we can be of help.