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. |