TeleMessage

TeleMessage is an Israeli software company based in Petah Tikva, Israel. Founded in 1999 by Guy Levit and Gil Shapira, it provides enterprise messaging, mobile communications archiving and high-volume text messaging services.[1]

TeleMessage suspended their worldwide services in May 2025 due to a significant cybersecurity incident. Hackers claimed to have breached the company's internal systems, which led to Telemessage halting all services to investigate and contain the incident.[2]

History

TeleMessage was founded in 1999 in Tel Aviv, Israel raising more than 10 million dollars in its first 2 series of investment rounds.[3] After being acquired by Messaging International plc in August 2005, it then went public and was traded on the London Stock Exchange AIM section under the Messaging International name.[4]

It received conditional funding of up to US$900,000 for a joint research and development project for "Secure Rich Communication Services Messaging" in 2015. The funding was provided by the Israel-US Binational Industrial Research and Development Foundation.[5]

In 2004, Canadian mobile network operator Rogers Wireless selected TeleMessage SMS to Landline solution, powered by ScanSoft RealSpeak, for its TXT 2 Landline service.[6] American wireless network operator Verizon Wireless started using TeleMessage's SMS service to convert typed text messages into audio messages that play to a recipient's landline phone, launching this service in June 2006.[7] Rogers Communications and the American telco Sprint Nextel were amongst others to launch the mail plugin.[8] In 2013, five years after Comverse launched the TeleMessage PC2Mobile with a Tier-1 European operator, Sprint started selling the TeleMessage offering to allow doctors and clinicians to send HIPAA-compliant texts.[9] Delisted from the British stock exchange and privatized in 2017, it joined the G-Cloud public procurement framework and a financial compliance partner program managed by Verint Systems in the following years.[10]

In 2019, it along with Boku Identity and Deep Labs joined NICE Actimize's X-Sight Marketplace.[11] In February 2020, Proofpoint, a Sunnyvale based enterprise security company partnered with TeleMessage to use their Mobile Archiver service for capturing text, voice and WhatsApp messages.[12] The company is also working with Microsoft in protecting and governing data that is arriving from other Microsoft 365 services.[13]

On February 20, 2024, the firm was acquired by Smarsh.[14] Telemessage's main industry competitor is Symphony Communication.

In May 2025, TeleMessage gained media attention after it was revealed that Mike Waltz, former U.S. National Security Advisor, was using a modified version of open source software Signal called "TM SGNL", created by TeleMessage to archive messages securely. Use predates the 2024 government; a federal contract starting in February 2023 has been found for 'TeleMessage mobile electronic message archiving'.[15][16] It was later reported that TeleMessage had been hacked, and that chat logs archived by TeleMessage's modified Signal application are not end-to-end encrypted, either in transit to their archival storage location or once at rest.[17]

Products

• Mobile Archiver - addresses mobile phone text and call archiving for compliance, regulatory and eDiscovery response requirements. It reduces risk across a variety of industries, capturing mobile content from BYOD and corporate phones; Enabling the captures and archive of: SMS, MMS, Voice calls, as well as WhatsApp and WeChat chats and calls.[18][19][20]
• Secure Enterprise Messaging - enables secure enterprise chat for co-workers by using user-friendly mobile apps and a range of APIs that connect to any operational IT system.
• Mass Messaging - provides tools to deliver multi and omnichannel bulk messaging across: SMS, MMS, Voice calls, Faxes, Email, and Mobile Apps.

Patents

• Mobile station (MS) message selection identification system[21]
• Controller for use with communications systems for converting a voice message to a text message[22]

Awards

• 2020, Best Regtech Solution by Finovate Awards.[23]

See also

• Comparison of instant messaging clients
• Internet privacy
• Secure instant messaging

External links