Silent SMS

A silent SMS (Type 0 SMS) is a message that is delivered to the handset and acknowledged on the network but never displayed to the user. Law enforcement and intelligence services use it to trigger paging and confirm a target's presence and approximate location through the resulting signalling. Silent SMS is detectable by some end-user privacy tools and is regulated in some jurisdictions.

Categories: Regulation and Compliance

Silent SMS in context

Telecom regulation is fragmenting across NIS2, the UK Telecoms Security Act, sector rules in the US, GCC and APAC, plus horizontal frameworks like GDPR and DORA.

To place Silent SMS in the wider telecom-security picture, review Metadata Retention, NRA, OCSP, NIS2 Directive, EECC and CER Directive — each entry cross-references back to this page so you can walk the topic in either direction.

Related terms

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