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Haaretz
Tuesday, September 23, 2003 Elul 26, 5763 Israel Time: 04:11
Odigo says workers were warned of attack
By Yuval Dror
Odigo, the instant messaging service, says that two of its workers received
messages two hours before the Twin Towers attack on September 11 predicting
the attack would happen, and the company has been cooperating with Israeli
and American law enforcement, including the FBI, in trying to find the
original sender of the message predicting the attack.
Micha Macover, CEO of the company, said the two workers received the
messages and immediately after the terror attack informed the company's
management, which immediately contacted the Israeli security services, which
brought in the FBI.
"I have no idea why the message was sent to these two workers, who don't
know the sender. It may just have been someone who was joking and turned out
they accidentally got it right. And I don't know if our information was
useful in any of the arrests the FBI has made," said Macover. Odigo is a
U.S.-based company whose headquarters are in New York, with offices in
Herzliya.
As an instant messaging service, Odigo users are not limited to sending
messages only to people on their "buddy" list, as is the case with ICQ, the
other well-known Israeli instant messaging application. Odigo usually
zealously protects the privacy of its registered users, said Macover, but in
this case the company took the initiative to provide the law enforcement
services with the originating Internet Presence address of the message, so
the FBI could track down the Internet Service Provider, and the actual
sender of the original message.
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