Mobile News
Don't choose an SMS forwarding Spy Phone System - It will bankrupt you
PURPOSE : A certain competitor of FlexiSPY called NEOCOST uses a much more expensive way of delivering the phone activity to you. This study will tell you how much more expensive NEOCOST SMS system compares to FlexiSPY GPRS system.
OVERVIEW : In the area of phone activity monitoring, activity data may be transferred using GPRS connections, or by sending information as an SMS. SMS costs vary with country of origin and country of destination. This study compares the FlexiSPY costs with SMS forwarding for the UK as source country and Thailand as destination.
FlexiSPY Operation : FlexiSPY may be set to deliver by timer or by number of events. In event mode, the maximum number of events is 1000, after which a network connection will automatically be made. This is the most economical mode. Alternatively, FlexiSPY may connect after every event, making this the most expensive mode.
Expensive SMS forwarding : SMS forwarding uses the SMS payload to deliver the Also due to the 160 character restriction, the number of SMS required to transmit an event may vary depending on the information to be conveyed. SMS costs were taken to be 1 USD for international and 35c for domestic reflecting average UK costs. GPRS cost were assumed to be 5 USD per MB.
| |
Unit
Size (Bytes) |
Payload
Size (Bytes) |
| Headers
(If using HTTP ) |
1024 |
1024 |
| SMS
Content |
160 |
160000 |
| Contact
Name |
20 |
20000 |
| Time |
8 |
8000 |
| Phone
Number |
16 |
16000 |
| Unique
ID |
4 |
4000 |
| MetaData |
5 |
5000 |
| GPRS
Payload size ( Bytes) |
|
214024 |
| Total
Cost using FLEXISPY (USD) |
|
$0.20 |
| Total
Cost using NEO COSTS (International) |
|
$1000.00 |
| Total
Cost using NEO COSTS( DOMESTIC) |
|
$350.00 |
| Cost
improvement using FLEXISPY ( International) |
|
5000 |
| Cost
Improvement using FLEXPSPY ( Domestic) |
|
1750 |
| 1MB
= 1,048,576 bytes |
Fig 1 Breakdown of delivering after 10000 Events
From Fig 1 above, we can see that the total data
size transmitted by FlexiSPY is 214024 bytes, which
costs around 20 cents. Assuming that somehow one SMS
is enough to transmit the information describing one
event, the equivalent costs, to the person paying
the bill for the monitored device is 1000 USD, if
the device is sending from UK to Thailand . If the
device was sending domestically it would cost about
350 dollars.
| |
Unit
Size (Bytes) |
| Headers
(If using HTTP ) |
1024 |
| SMS
Content |
160 |
| Contact
Name |
20 |
| Time |
8 |
| Phone
Number |
16 |
| Unique
ID |
4 |
| MetaData |
5 |
| GPRS
Payload size ( Bytes) |
1237 |
| Cost
Per M (USD) |
$5 |
| Total
Cost using FLEXISPY (USD) |
$0.0059 |
| Total
Cost using NEOCOSTS international SMS |
$1 |
| Total
Cost using NEOCOSTS SMS domestic SMS |
$0.35 |
| Cost
improvement using FLEXISPY ( International) |
169.5 |
| Cost
Improvement using FLEXISPY ( Domestic) |
59 |
| 1MB
= 1,048,576 bytes |
Fig 2 Breakdown of delivering after every event
In Fig 2, FlexiSPY is set to deliver after every event. It can be seen that the data costs are just over half a cent, while the same information, if able to be sent using one SMS, will cost the international or domestic rate.
Conclusion
FlexiSPY is up to 5000 times cheaper than NEO COSTS SMS forwarding.
SMS forwarding is limited by the amount of data that can be carried in an SMS, and the costs vary dramatically. SMS forwarding will quite easily breach the limits of a PRE PAID account because these accounts are low value, usually about 100BT or ?5 sterling. You rarely get SMS promotions at PRE PAID, and SMS forwarding will deplete the users after a few dozen events.
PRE PAID accounts account for the majority of most network operators customers. In the UK and Thailand, over 70% of subscriptions are PRE PAID.
For POST PAID accounts, the monthly bill would be grossly inflated by the SMS charges. It is therefore very likely that SMS forwarding monitoring systems would easily be detected by an otherwise unaware user as their network service would be terminated due to excessive costs.
