Des employés de l'entreprise Odigo ont reçu des messages les avertissants de l'imminense de l'attaque du WTC

Odigo says workers were warned of attack
By Yuval Dror

>>Dans le quotidien israélien Ha'aretz

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.

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Jusqu'au 4 février 2002 au moins (dernière vérification), en tapant Odigo dans le moteur de recherche de CNN.com, on obtenait une liste de résultats dont le seul qui aboutissait à une "erreur 404" était celui-ci:  FBI probing 'threatening' message, firm says (28-Sep-01)  The FBI is looking into whether a warning sent to employees at an instant message company less than two hours before jetliners slammed into the World Trade Center was connected to the attacks, a company executive confirmed Friday.

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Le Washington Post, lui, confirme la réception de ces messages.
By Brian McWilliams, Newsbytes NEW YORK, NEW YORK, U.S.A., 27 Sep 2001, 11:48 AM CST
Officials at instant-messaging firm Odigo confirmed today that two employees received text messages warning of an attack on the World Trade Center two hours before terrorists crashed planes into the New York landmarks.

Citing a pending investigation by law enforcement, the company declined to reveal the exact contents of the message or to identify the sender.
 But Alex Diamandis, vice president of sales and marketing, confirmed that workers in Odigo's research and development and international sales office in Israel received a warning from another Odigo user approximately two hours prior to the first attack.
Diamandis said the sender of the instant message was not personally known to the Odigo employees. Even though the company usually protects the privacy of users, the employees recorded the Internet protocol address of the message's sender to facilitate his or her identification.
Soon after the terrorist attacks on New York, the Odigo employees notified their management, who contacted Israeli security services. In turn, the FBI was informed of the instant message warning. FBI officials were not immediately available for comment today.
The Odigo service includes a feature called People Finder that allows users to seek out and contact others based on certain interests or demographics. Diamandis said it was possible that the attack warning was broadcast to other Odigo members, but the company has not received reports of other recipients of the message.
In addition to operating its own messaging service network, Odigo has licensed its technology to over 100 service providers, portals, wireless carriers, and corporations, according to the company.