Anna Edwards

Mobile phone users are seeking instant social profiles of themselves and others using an "ego text" inquiry service.

A mobile question and answer service, 199QUERY, has been inundated with people requesting information on people they meet - and themselves.

Users send a name and suburb and receive a profile of the person on their phone.

Started two years ago by Sydney-based Australian Royal Navy electronic weapons engineer Sebastien Maslin, the service promises to provide the answer to any question texted in. It uses social networks and people's last names to detect friends and families.

"Almost everyone has an internet footprint and in cases where there hasn't been ... we've been able to find the group of people around them or family name so we can still get a personalised answer." he said.

Fifty-four per cent of 199QUERY texts were classed as "ego texts", Maslin said.

mX tried out the service, with one employee receiving spookily accurate results. But another was perplexed at being told she was a friend of two people she had never met and that she was an award-winning performer despite never being on stage.

"A lot of people are texting in their names and suburbs to try to find out what we can find out about them, " Maslin said. "In the last two months, ego texts have eclipsed all the others."

Originally printed in mX newspaper 28 Feb 2008