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"If the tariffs weren't in place, it would be like taking a little bit of bitter medicine," says Alex Beller, board member of the Ecommerce Innovation Alliance, a business lobby group and a co-founder of Postscript, which works with thousands of smaller businesses on text messaging marketing.

These involved two separate apps—one for end-to-end encrypted voice calling, the other for end-to-end encrypted text messaging—that were combined into one service called Signal and released in 2014, making history as the first free nonprofit all-in-one encrypted communications system.

Last year, Sapo accused Iranian intelligence of hacking into a text messaging service to send 15,000 messages to Swedes, after several Quran burnings.

He had been given his first mobile phone for his 18th birthday and had just discovered text messaging.

They use text messaging and social media to warn people of confirmed operations, and more often, to tamp down the rumors that can spur people to stay home from work and keep their kids home from school.