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Protect Your Cell Phone From Spam
Dejected @Work writes "If wireless technology ever kicks off you may be getting spam phone calls - "hot deals 10 feet away". If so you will have to use techniques like RMI, BrightMail, and latest e-mail filters to keep phone spam free. This article examines some of these tools and programming concepts."
Uh, oh. I get lots of spam on my computer, and it sucks. And now I'm going to get lots of spam on my phone.
The difference?
I can throw my phone...
Bulk email is (relatively) free.
Spam phone calls would not be. Not only would companies have to pay for the phone calls, but they would also have to pay someone to make them.
Also...what's new about this? Haven't you ever been called by a telemarketer?
-kwishot
Hi, my name is Jenny im 18 and me and my girlfriend were wondering if you wanted to see us live ...
;)
Hmm.. except, this is the kind of thing I'd purchase "in real life"
I understand that spam by SMS is already becoming a problem, in the UK some of my friends have responded to competitions (SMS your answer to...), not realising that in the VERY fine print they were selling their soul (and mobile phone number) to the SMS spam merchants.
Spam by email is bad enough - but spam by mobile phone when you could be interrupted any time, any where without knowing if it's a critical SMS from work, or meaningless spam is an invasion of privacy.
I'd like to see this new form of spam stamped on hard, and stamped on fast, before it gains even more of a foothold as "acceptable practice". Anyone receiving spam by SMS should do everything possible to report it, and ensure that the companies making use of this form of advertising are made aware that it is totaly unacceptable.
We may have lost the fight againast mail spam - but if we fight now, and fight hard, we may just be able to keep our mobile phones free from this junk...maybe...
-- Pete.
Monochrome - Probably the UK's largest internet BBS
Most of the major Cell providers have a web->SMS gateway, so that you can send a cell messaage via your browser.
This is nice, and I use them.
But what's to stop some low-live scum sucker from using these to send "Enlarge your penis!" messages? I've wondered since there's no authentication at all. It would be (was) trivial to write a script that auto-submits information to a cell number.
(SPAMMERS - YOU HAVE BEEN INFECTED WITH A MIND RAY. YOU DO NOT REMEMBER ANYTHING YOU'VE READ FOR THE PAST 24 HOURS)
-Ben
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
I say don't buy a new phone. Both of mine work fine. 'Course I'm the sort that hates to be on the phone anyway, so having a phone around isn't a priority. After all, there are only a very small number of people who must be contacted any time, any place. I'm certainly not in that set. And I'm definitely not in that set when I'm at the movies. Maybe nobody else should be too...
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
If I know the spammer is ten feet away chances are I might go there and "#@£% his @#"! :-)
I would imagine that spam text messages would be hard to report because many of the headers are removed because of space/storage restrictions. I think that the burden would lie pretty heavily on the providers. How far is too far, though? If you're asking your provider to log and/or prosecute spammers, they inherently *have* to sort through your personal messages. As I understand it now, most services just send the information directly to your phone without having to actually store it on their servers at all.
-kwishot
The majority of spam messages are from anonymous or overseas accounts where it is extremely hard to track down the physical location for the seller.
If someone sends me a message telling me that "HOT DEALS ARE 10 FEET AWAY!" then unless the deals are really hot, there is going to be a lot of yelling, screaming and physical activity going on.
Of course, if the message is along the lines of "MY GIRLFRIENDS WANT YOU NOW!!!", the yelling, screaming and 'physical activity' may be of a more pleasant nature.
I'd consider carrying mace if that "Deal 10 ft away" scenario came into being.
-Peter
== Just my opinion(s)
I'm already getting SPAM SMSs from Nokia for example. They are advertising by sending me SMS messages once in a while. Can't say I like that.
As if I don't get enough wrong numbers on my cell phone already, coupled with the large volume of spam I already recieve via e-mail, this would drive me CrAzY!
Maybe force companies who send cell phone spam to use cell phones for their business phones? I'd gladly call and listen to their sales pitch if I knew it was gonna cost them an arm and a leg to keep me on the line (evil grin)
There are only 10 kinds of people in this world... those who understand binary and those who don't
We look at someting differently when we call it spam. If spam is an unsolicited advertisment that I receive on my cell phone or computer, then I also get about 3 spams per day on my land-line phone.
tcd004
We've redesigned. But we're still idiots.
hehe I can see the headlines now! US district court has declared that cell phones are a transmission device that carry morally offensive advertising and will be banned in all areas to protect children..
:|
hehe that would be amusing... first hold the backbones liable for the content.. then the cell phone providers.. well it would stop possible cell ads in the futre
This poem expresses my feelings about spam perfectly.
Geek Girl Chronicles
At the moment, I don't own a cell phone. Shocking, I know. I've been on the fence about breaking down and picking one up for emergency and urgent use.
However, if I would have to deal with spam phone calls and spam messages in my voice mail, forget it. I'm annoyed enough having to obfuscate my e-mail address just so I don't have to slog through crap I'll never look over, never mind reply to. It's bad enough that spammers manage to waste bandwidth by hitting some mailing lists I'm subscribed to. The last thing I want is to have the fucking telemarketers and spam gods following me everywhere, wasting my time and patience. I would either get an ancient cell phone, or just not get one at all.
Nice job, spammers - you just lost yourselves a potential victim by the sheer threat of your infecting another market. Fuck off and die somewhere.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
I'm pretty sure it's illegal for them to telemarket to unlisted phone numbers. (Bear in mind, I'm Canadian, so it might make a difference.)
I know that the one time I did receive a telemarketting call to my cell phone, the following conversation took place.
Me: "Let me talk to your supervisor."
Them: "Um..."
Me: "Me. Supervisor. Now."
(hold for a couple minutes)
Supervisor: "What can I do for you?"
Me: "Are you aware that I'm currently in Milan, and paying roughly $20/minute for international cell phone calls?"
Supervisor: "Uh..."
Me: "I expect you to reimburse me."
Haven't had a telemarketer call my cell phone since....
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
SPAM via SMS would be a problem for spammers compared to email. Why you ask? In most parts of the worl, SMS is not free. In in those areas wherein SMS is not free, most of time, they charge you per message instead of a fixed monthly rate for unlimited SMS sending. So in other words, SMS costs would be a burden on part of the spammer. In this part of the world where I live, an SMS costs almost 2 cents (USD), while the other neighboring countries costs at least 4 cents per message you send. (I live somewhere in SE Asia.)
Take-off every
Last year I was called by a someone from one of these financial expert firms. So he asks me if I'm interested in one of their products, and I say "NO". Then he asks me if he may pay us a visit to explain their products. "No" is my reply. Then he goes on to say that their products are the best and can't be beaten etc. Tired of the conversation I tell him that I want to hang up.
"If I give you 50 bucks, will you listen to me for half an hour?"
At first I thought he was joking, but apparently he was so desperate that he even offered to money to hear him out. 50 bucks for half an hour seemed like a good deal, and even if he didn't pay us it would make a good story to tell my grandchildren so I accepted.
The guy came to our house, asked for the number of my bank account, explained his products during half an hour (for which I obviously had no interest) and left. A few days later the 50 bucks had been deposited in my account.
What's the world coming to?
no sig error.
would be a typical SMS message to expect.. :L
So, I decided to help the guy advertise. I went to Google, typed in 'XXX "free for all" link' and placed ads on about 30 sex related free-for-all pages reading "FREE PHONE SEX! - Try us out! 520-xxx-yyyy".
Interestingly, I haven't received any more spam from that place.
(Posting anonymously in case anybody who knows the spammer reads /.)
I think RIM is a very unfortunate name for any technology. It only invites South Park jokes.
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
sex lines have found the strenght of marketing directly to your mobile phone. not in the convential way though, they've been quite creative.
Method 1 (SMS). well there's been some amount of SPAM SMSs telling something like "hi, I'm Katja, I'm from Russia and I need a friend, I'm waiting for you, call me at *********"...
method 2 (call). Second method is quite simple, they call you, but won't let the phone ring long enough for you to answer it. Afterwards you see the number on the screen and call back.
The thing here is that the number they use is not the usual 0700-number, but a regular cellphone number. They either redirect their calls or use cellphones and bill later. This, of cource, is illegal and there's been some kind on police investigations. Luckily it ins't a big problem, I've had 1 SMS and few calls in 4 years. but just think of the worst scenario
-Jaakko
It seems we have forgotten all about fax machines and the law that they prompted.
Let's see. There is a law against sending unsolicited ads to your fax machine. This came about because it cost the recipient to recieve this unwanted crap - in paper, toner, etc.
Our legislators, in their wisdom, determined that we shouldn't have to be subject to crap we don't want, especially when we had to pay for it.
Ok, now to cut to the chase. Even if my Internet service is billed on a flat fee instead of by bandwith or connect time (in the US), it still costs me a cash outlay (some divided portion of my monthly ISP fee), to recieve spam. Not to mention the value of my time dealing with it. I know this has been mentioned many times before, but the message doesn't seem to be getting through to the lawmakers.
-- Rant On --
If this starts happening on my cell phone where I do pay by the minute or the message, I'm gonna become hell on wheels. Anyone up for a class action suit? Not against the spammers, but against our so-called representatives for not protecting our interests. Ok, well maybe against the spammers too. Considering the intent of the fax law, doesn't this cover this eventuality already?
If I have to go to law school myself, that's fine. My needs are minimal and I'm not averse to living like a pauper to give all my time to pro bono work.
If I recieve ads for some business 50 feet away. They're gonna hear from me. I'm gonna collect the cost of that spam message recieved on my phone. It might be only be a penny or a dime, but I'll tell them I want it in a check not cash. If they won't pay me, I'll whip out my sandwich board and picket the damn place, or make myself as annoying as possible. Or maybe I should do all of the above...
This crap has to stop. If it takes law or civil disobedience, I don't care. It has to stop.
-- Rant Off --
Of course the upside to this is that my old analog Motorola TAC II phones and my Audiovox bag phone will become very valuable.
War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. - George Orwell or George Bush?
The email address for the Docomo cell phone that my company issued me was apparently in use before, and got in the hands of spammers and was included in an email database. I have gotten 46 (!!) spam emails to that phone in the past 5 hours and 20 minutes, all for i-Mode sex sites and such.
:-P
At least in my case my company is picking up the bill-- i-Mode users in Japan pay for all received packets, so you are billed for all of the spam that you receive.
Docomo has tried to stop the flow by allowing you to block email from specified domains, but of course that doesn't help things at all. I know several people who end up having to change their cell phone email address every few months because the email features of their phone become unusable due to the amount of spam they start to get. (The spammers get their email address when they register on i-Mode capable web sites, or if they have an easy-to-guess email address like tanaka@docomo.ne.jp)
Up until last year or so you could usually send email to [cell phone #]@[cell phone provider].ne.jp, but the cell phone companies all had to discontinue that service because of the amount of spam that would be sent to all of their customers.
Compared to what I'm getting to my work phone, the amount of spam I get to my email accounts is nothing...
CC-licensed translations of Japanese fiction: http://tonygonz.blogspot.com/
Spamming with sms was banned ages ago in finland, haven't seen single one after that.
much like spam faxes, unsolicited calls to cell phones will cost the end user a *lot* of money. Its something that the consumers will never stand for.
Currently i know that if you recieve a spam fax you can send a copy to:
Consumer Information Bureau
Federal Communications Commision
445 Twelfth St. SW
Washington DC 20554
if you ask that appropriate legal action be taken, it works! Not only that, you can sue the people who send the faxes (not for a ton, but the maximum amt is well over the cost of printer cartridges and paper)
Since this seems like a fairly equivalent situation, i.e the cost of the spam will definitely have a fair sized impact on your own bill (unlike standard telephone telemarkating and junk mail)... i would be surprised if things didn't work out the same way once complaints start flowing
In some loser geek's fucked up fantasy world.
BTW, since nobody claimed first post, it's mine.
I like petting kittens.
Hmm entrapment, encitement to commit violence, aiding and abetting criminal acts, accesory to assault, conspiracy to commit assualt.
Who the fuck made you judge and jury?
Sure we will post this information - first lets have all those details for you?
Yep i guessed it - your'e not brave enough are you.
Fuck off - we dont need your sort on slashdot.
though they tend to get your permission for this.. some other companies too send some adds, mainly companies who's services are mainly used with sms messages, effective adds since you just have to press reply and maybe type your name to take part in some goofy competition or something else.
my phone company has this premium channel which means that i get some calls cheaper, and they send me useless info about which calls and when(like i was looking at the watch when using the phone anyways..), and useless info on about that i should grab the newest pamphlet and get groovy.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
In fact its such a big thing that even respected global players such as Logica (their software runs over 50% of the SMS gateways in the world) are getting involved according to this article in the Financial Times.
In short getting people responding to SMS spam is unreliable because due to difficiencies in the GSM protocol you can only catch about one SMS reply to an advert every 5 seconds.
Because of this, take up of bulk SMS advertisements (where people respond) is slow. But thanks to the boffins at Logica, they now have software which can harvest 1,000 replies a second.
Which suddenly makes pumping out SMS spam look a lot more worthwhile.
Coming soon to a phone near you ...?
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
I hope the cell companies would adopt that. It doesn't require Java-enabled phones or email redirection.
Each cellular user will have a preferences page at the cellular provider web page. In that page she can choose if she want to receive all sms messages, or require that a certain key will appear in incoming SMS message.
She can manage a set of keys (a string of characters, or a number), and if someone tries to send her a message without a key in the SMS body, the SMS message will be rejected (and the sender will possibly get an error message).
She can also create a list of origins which can freely send her messages even if they don't have a key, and even set that people who specify the correct key automatically gets added to the list, so they don't have to type the key again.
-- The ballad of arrivederci
Whenever I click on the Minimize button the browser window gets minimized for a second and pops right back up!
Dammit! My boss caught me reading Slashdot on company time because of that fucking bug!
This problem seems analogous to the one posed by Jack Valenti's plan to build copy protection into home entertainment systems. The next generation of various devices will be fatally compromised by 1) content restriction protocoals and 2) back doors for corporate and government watchdogs, and spammers.
/. about building your own PVRs, wireless networks, customized computers, etc. Maybe some enterprising geek will someday soon post about building your own cell phone. (One that runs Linux, perhaps?) :)
I will stick with my non-wireless-web cell phone until I see a good reason to upgrade (or until I'm forced to, b/c it breaks or b/c they change the protocol and force me to do so).
I wonder...we've seen a lot on
I'm currently stationed in Okinawa and all my Japanese friends are currently frustrated by the ammount of spam they receive.
Also, not sure if you have seen the new Sprint PCS phone from Sanyo, but it is getting close to the tech out here and I beleive will allow emails of any size to come through.
I know I've sent some sizeable ones (500 - 700 characters to provide directions) to my friends and they received them just fine. The also can receive pics in emails.
The flip side of this is the unbeleivable convenience it is to get written driving directions sent to you. Not to mention when the US finally catches up to Japan and releases $200 phones that also have a digital camera in them.
my two cents...
I've dirtied my hands writing poetry, for the sake of seduction; that is, for the sake of a useful cause. --Dostoevsky
Big difference: My home phone is a fixed rate for incomming calls. No matter where I get a call from in the world, it costs me nothing at all to accept it, unless it is collect in which case I have the option of refusing. Unlimited incomming calls are a part of the $15/month I shell out for the line. However with a cell hpone, I have to pay for airtime, even on incomming calls. You can be calling me from the same network, and it doesn't matter, the airtime used still comes out of my minutes. Therefore, unsolicited cellphone calls cost ME money, which makes me mad and shouldn't be legal.
Jesus Christ what a rip-off. Do you have to pay for incoming calls too?
There are a few ways I can see this being played out...
1. The spammer uses cell phone email. This would be like the current email spam, in which the cell phone user would just receive tons of spam mail to their phone's email box. I'm not sure but this might already be available.
2. Text messaging spam. In some phones that I know of users can receive text messages. I think there were a bunch of verizon commercials about this a while back. But companies would send tons of messages to the phone, much like spam email but in the text message form. If this happens I can see lots of people just turning this feature on their phone off.
3. Telemarketing Spam, this is where the spammer makes a voice call to your phone, or a computer calls you. Both would be equally annoying if you get them the same volume that email spam is received right now. The thing is this is already available. I'm sure if you start listing your cell phone number on a bunch of forms you'll start to get telemarketing calls around 5pm each day on your cell phone. I'm guessing most people would treat these calls the say way that they treat telemarketers right now, just hang out on them.
well hopefully this doesn't catch on, it seems as if it wouldn't be as free to do this sort of spam...
ahh, the egg in the basket..
Club Nokia is an opt-in club. If you had bothered reading the contract when you joined, you'd have seen that you agree to receive those SMS messages.
What were you thinking when you joined the club? Did you really think that its purpose was anything else than harvesting user profiles and advertisement?
What do you mean "occasionally"? Using IE to read Slashdot at -1 has been made practically impossible by page widening.
But you shouldn't be browsing at -1 at work anyway
I shouldn't be browsing at work. Period.
I don't see why I should browse at a different level at work and at home. Please tell me why should I do such a thing?
Cell spam when you enter the vacinity isn't much different than walking by the chinese restaurant in the food court and getting a piece of chicken on a toothpick waved in front of your face. Personally, I don't think the vacinity cell spam will work. A sign is probably more effective.
Furthermore, there's a fundamental flaw in the idea. How the hell are they to get your phone number when you approach? If they could do that, than anyone could find out your number just by getting close to you, and certainly that would cause worse problems! (Hey babe,you don't know me, but you just walked by me a minute ago, and damn you're lookin' leet! Wanna see my firewire?)
Me: "Are you aware that I'm currently in Milan, and paying roughly $20/minute for international cell phone calls?"
Find another carrier!!!
You will save a lot of dosh. And those spam-swines won't gonna reimburse you in the first place.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
Unlike email, sending an SMS costs money, so how do the spammers do it?
Well, there are a bunch of networks across Europe which all allow SMS to travel between them for free - they have mutual exchange agreements. There are a lot of these networks: all the operators and a lot of small players which provide email2sms and commercial SMS type services. The spammers pay once-off to use these commercial services and then pump out millions of SMSs.
So what happens is that Vodaphone for example then cancels its contract with that little commercial SMS company and the company changes it's services/rates/business. Meanwhile the spammer moves on to another small commercial SMS provider.
It's just the same cycle as regularly switching ISPs, spamming successfully before getting blocked.
Imagine cellphones with scripting abilities... You could send an SMS which would forward itself to every number in your phonebook. It would probably bounce back and forth between a large number of people owning phones with wounerable scripting abilities and effectively flood entire GSM networks. Let's just hope M$ never makes a cellphone...
what next, do you have to pay to receive mail too? (in some rural areas of new zealand people have to do that, but it is a fixed yearly fee)
Sounds crazy.
Cell phone spam could be the best thing to happen to us yet. People can ignore E-Mail spam becuase they dont see the actual effects, they're just a client, all they have to do is delete them or filter them or whatever. People are annoyed by telemarketers on the phone, but other than the annoyance, there isnt any real loss....
But now take Cell-Phones, which you have to pay for every time you make a connection.
Suiddenly people are outraged at charges for things they didnt wish to recieve. It's brought up with the BBB, Cell Phone companies demand protection, and the end results are laws passed making it illegal to drain resources of a network with intent of making a profit without compensating the network or having the network's consent. Spam is declared larceny, Spam is made illegal as the costs of it are made more public.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
I think there is seriously wrong with the people who are ready to ban spamming. That's like a big OK for banning certain kind of speech. So, after spam gets banned what's next? Phone sex, unpopular political opinions (oh, I forgot, Europe has already banned "hate" speech) or what?
I know spam's bloody annoying but it is still speech and the freedom of speech should be protected at any cost.
SMS ads can be incredibly intrusive, so we have to tread lightly, but they're a pretty powerful marketing tool which can be used ethically.
Spam is speech.
Spam is made illegal
In that case, why won't we make other kind of speech illegal as well. Unpopular political opinions, for instance. Right now Europe is well on its way to banning "hate" speech. If the current draft goes through, that will make me a criminal. I have no qualms of speaking my mind about hordes of niggers and arabs fucking up our White Continent. If that makes me a criminal, I'll be more than happy to do jailtime as a political prisoner.
I am sure that phone spam will be less of a problem.
The spammers main advantage today is that they can hide in anonymity.
If someone spams me when I am nearby I will certainly let them know how I fell about it.
> You've gotta sin to get saved.
Once upon a time a pr0n company found out that sending spam sex messages to Finnish mobile phones would be nice idea...
Since that incident spamming to fax, email, mobile phone or any other device has been illegal in Finland.
Only if person/company has told that he/they want(s) commercials, a company may send them.
Believe it, we already know about it.
I just realized that I spend more time reading about spam on /. then I do deleting it from my inbox.
I get the spam as text messages on my phone. So far every message that comes in is from @yahoo.com. I've contacted yahoo and they say they have nothing to do with the problem. Luckily I don't have to pay for each text message but if I did I bet I could easily win a lawsuit against them.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
Is to turn the phone off.
"First you gotta do the truffle shuffle."
Don't kid yourself that the mobile providers will be the first to sell your name... the numbers you call... where you frequent [remember, "we're" putting GPS in the phones for your safety!]... the times of day you use your phone [best time to spam]
I'm sure it's profitable for them to upgrade their SMS Gateways and other hardware to handle the bandwidth of bulkmail due to the profitable nature of demographic information.
------------------------------
Ray Raspberry
raspberry@b3l33t.org
How ironic that this was the top story on slashdot this morning. I was already ticked off about the topic because I just received some this morning.
About a month ago, my wife got a spam on her cell phone:
[email address here]##Finally yours. DVD Copier
A few days later, I got the exact same messsage and was steaming mad. Just this morning I got a followup message:
[email address here]##Just wanted to follow up with you#Copy & Burn DVD and VHS with CD Burner!! + Bonus package Playstation2 & Dreamcast Backup Software! W
I can deal with email spam (dont like it, but can deal with it). But this is only my second cell phone spam and I'm just furious. The thing that sends me off the edge about it is that its just so obtrusive. With email spam, I deal with it on my own time (when I decide to check my email) but with cell phone spam, Im in the middle of something else and my phone goes off "beep, beep, beep". The thing is, it always kinda startles me when it happens. I have my cell phone pretty much for talking to my wife (she has a cell phone and we have the family plan where we call each other for free) and emergency purposes only. If I KNOW its not my wife calling, then its probably something pretty important....guess not anymore.
I tell you what...SPAM my phone all you want, as long as I get a free phone, free service, and free long distance. Kind of like AvantGo for my palm, except for cell phones. Who knows this get it for free so you can be our captive audience service might work.
I've been working on a project to implement a marketing tools based on wireless platform, and it will never behave as computer spam. For one simple reason, the company has to pay for each message sent.
So, when one company has to pay for the service they will not waste money to bother people that don't want the information.
At this moment one of the requests from the companies is that the service must be subscribed, and not imposed on the users.
Long live TUX!
...travelling in Europe, once or twice as my phone logged onto the local network when I get off the plane, the telco has spammed me with an SMS. Ho hum.
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
On the other hand, billing them for the service of evaluating their spam at the top of my lungs sounds like a nice idea.
It probablty will fit under telemarkeing laws, and may fit into the trend developing for people to be opted out of such a service as a default choice as a matter of law.
[ianal, etc]
I can even see going into the store, insisting to find out who is providing them this "service", and then suing the spamming service provider along with the spammer.
Or a retake on the old satire with the mob based spam prevention service.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Forging the "From:" header is the first thing any aspiring spammer learns. You can trust only "Received:", one of them, which has been bumped by your ISP's mail server.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
I think what the mobile phone service providers will find is people will not buy phones. I know I will as soon cancel my service and be without one to avoid adverts I don't want to here/read then get buzzed every 2 minutes.
Spam phone calls on a cell phone are illegal (in the sense that you can win the argument). Since they're harassing you on YOUR DIME, you can and should always prosecute the marketer. They will be fined and you are eligible for a reward varying between 200 and 500$ depending on the alignment of Jupiter's moons.
If the marketers are stupid enough to disregard this once this wireless tracking shite becomes commonplace, then I'll do my best to entrap them and make a living from busting spam artists.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
In Japan, cell phone spam has been a problem for quite some time now. The problem with cell phone spam is not just being seriously annoying, but the fact that it is NOT FREE for the receiver. NTT DoCoMo, the major cell phone carrier in Japan, charges per packet of data transmission. That goes for sending or receiving mail, and surfing the web.
Spammers use automated tools to sweep every imaginable alpha-numeric combination + @docomo.ne.jp. If they don't have your address now, they'll get to it eventually, even if you don't tell ANYONE your address. The only work around to this is to have an insanely random and long user name, and even this is only a temporary work around. Unlucky people that have easy to guess user names can receive a $20 monthly bill for mail alone, and this isn't that rare of a case.
To make things worse, a new form of phone spam is becoming a problem. Phone sex services use an automated program to call random combinations of cell phone numbers. (Cell phones in Japan start with a 090- prefix.) They call, and hang up on the first ring. All phones have caller ID, so the caller wonders who it was, and calls back, only to be greeted by the voice of a sexy woman. Worse yet, the caller usually doesn't turn his/her own caller ID off, so the service grabs the phone number as "successful" and then sells a list of known phone numbers, meaning the user will receive numerous calls. And no, this is not illegal (yet) in Japan. If the receiver doesn't pick up before the first ring, there is no cost on the part of the caller. But calling back usually costs at least $0.10 even if they hang up immediately.
Worse yet, this immense spamming is over loading the mail servers for the cell phone provider, and delaying legitimate mail. I have received mail delayed as long as 24 hours once. (Mail from phone to phone is by-passed, I believe, and doesn't suffer from the delay.)
If this is of any clue to cell phone providers in the U.S., they better wise up and find out a way to stop this before it happens, because it will happen, faster than you may imagine! (If the only plan is regulation by national law, U.S. cell phone users may want to think twice about buying a mail-enabled phone!)
That may solve the SMS SPAM, but it won't solve email, or WAP SPAM. There was a lot of talk on the carriers side and third party developers to build a common infrastructure to look at the size of the data and figure out how much unused bits are present. IE, if it it's going to take 10 and a quarter packets to send a page, they want to fill the 11th packet with ads. Now some people are going to think, "that is evil" but fact is the carriers are actively looking at ways to sell ads on wireless. During the boom, a lot of people were thinking "free phone +spam" might be a viable business model. It's only going to get worse, but isn't that the nature of SPAM?
"...you may be getting spam phone calls"
"...you will have to use...e-mail filters to keep phone spam free..."
How is an email filter going to keep a phone call from coming in?
I get the point, but it would really help credibility if the text made sense logically.
"A terrorist is someone who has a bomb but doesn't have an air force." -William Blum
Spam is commercialism, marketing, intrusive and often dis-honest.
There is a major difference between banning political opinions and banning annoying/offending advertisment. Especially when it is targeting your cellular phone.
So while it may be "speech", it is fairly obvious that it is unwanted speech. If you can't stop unwanted speech by conventional means, you have to act agressive.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
I could just see it. My cell phone recieving the message.
"Computer Consultant 4 Hire -- Call 773-yyy-zzzz 4 more info."
I'll know right away to tell the cellular service to discontinue service to Bernard Shifman. If he threatens legal action. I'll just respond with my legal team at Yourassis, Grass & I.M. DeLawnmower.
To my utter surprise, disgust, and latter irritation I found that I had recived a "page" on my cell phone, thinking it was someone important I opened it, only to fid it was spam! I was disgusted to say the least, but with the advent of the wireless communications from Sprint (my provider), Nextel, Verizon, etc. they all offer paging capabilites that you can e-mail, and the e-mail gets forwareded to the phone. It's only a matter of time before the spammers figure out that they can just do mass "guessing" against those networks and set everyone's cell phone off with spam. To say the least this is NOT A good thing, and I'm honestly debating alternatives, any ideas?
I can SSH at 9600 bps from HP-LX to my network server running Linux, via cell phone, which is slow and (relatively) expensive, but at least I can do it *really* from everywhere. And there are
higher bandwidth options, paid per-traffic, not per-time-online already widely available, using existing infrastructure.
We are not getting spam phone calls, but normal e-mail spam sometimes penetrates to my cell phone (fortunately only first 160 characters
At least one of our 3 GSM operators is offering service, which is based on approximation of your location (using database of BTS stations), and which tells you about nearest hotel, restaurant, and whatever, but only if you request such information. I am not using this service - it is not in menu of my SIM card, and I don't have patience to learn codes to send SMS requests for this information manualy.
Czech Republic is still developing country in eyes
of many Americans. Popullation 10 million uses 7 million GSM phones in 3 networks. I have read in
xchaos(at)arachne.cz
In North America cell phone plans are per minute, all calls. In Eurpoe all calls are caller pays. (simplification on both sides of the pond, but close enough)
This is different. It is not better it is not worse, it is different. There are advantages to each system. Just because your system is different doesn't mean that it is better. Do not pick on the downsides to our system that you don't have because your system has downsides too. In fact, the downsides are mutially exclusive, that is you can't have the best of both worlds! You pick one system or the other (there are more than two possibal systems), and live with the down sides as well as the good.
Well... I'm going to go punch the shopkeeper right in the mouth for interupting my day. Especially if he's selling DIPLOMAS from prestegious non-accredited institutions. I hate spam, is there a militant anti-spam organization? Perhaps one called Start Protecting American Mail or Stand Proud Against Mailers...
"...you will have to use techniques like RMI, BrightMail, and latest e-mail filters to keep phone spam free."
No, I"ll just hunt down the source of the transmission and smash it; assuming that GPS isn't involved.
Cell phone spam has one big advantage over regular spam - it will piss off people who can do something about it (in the US at least). Every Congressman/women/senator I've seen at the airport has a cell phone - and therefore is a potential target for the latest Viagra/MAKE*MONEY*FAST/Surefire stock tip spam. While they probably don't even see the spam in their email, phone spam will be hard to ignore, especially if it starts to interfere with normal business. While I am generally not a big fan of government soultions to commercial problems, this one may call for one.
A sender pays format might also drive phone servcie providers to develop verification of sender technologies so they can be assured of getting their pennies per message,as well as install spam detection technology and phone filtering capabilities similar to those used for email today.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
This may turn out to be quite advantageous to us all - unless your a SPAMming scumbag !
Why? While it is true that - in some cases -one must pay additional money for bandwidth when downloading SPAM over the net, it is rare and the total cost is at most a few pennies a month, making it hard to convince the well to do politicians that it's even a valid issue to explore. Things change drastically however when cell phones are involved.
Calling someone on a pre-pay cell phone, or during peak hours when peak minutes aren't bundled in a package, can cost about $0.30/call. 10 calls a day, 300 days per year (for ease of math, and owing to the idea that weekends and holidays will be less active), is $900.00 per year of burden pushed on the consumer! Even a fat cat in Washington has to recognize that this is unacceptable. This should pave the way for discussion, at which point it will be hard to argue that their is a fundamental difference between the two other than scale. End result
OK
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Wouldn't the service providers take care of blocking random spam, just to be able to offer a decent service availability? :)
Would anything that's planned for near future be able to handle all of it? UWB of course, but that's not gonna happen anything soon
one or two years ago some company started using SMS to advertise something which turned out to be a fraud. I don't remember the details but it's not a problem anymore. The phone companies changed the service so that you have to add trusted email addresses. No one else can email your phone.
Hitler's in the fridge.
I have received 3 spam emails on my phone in the last month... the senders specify a "special" ring for it, and I have to check it. I have responded each time with a request not to send me any more SPAM. Any ideas on how ot stop it? It's on an AT&T Nationwide Plan, one of the New Panasonics. As if I didn't get targeted for enough crap anyway...
Why not? Because the receiver doesn't pay the cost of SPAM, the sender does. If you want to send me a SMS you must pay the cost (about 5 cents or a little less in volume in my country). So it won't be the same threat level as email spam.
In the same vein, you don't really have telephone/cellphone SPAM at the same level you have email SPAM, since it costs the sender, not the receiver, to make a call in most "sane" countries.
The real threat is the "SPAMadvertiser" that thinks it can make money and not bear the risks/costs. If s/he must bear the costs, I don't believe the same "genious" will be doing much of it...
absolutely cluseless. I started getting freaking spam about checking my credit and work from home. it pisses me off so much. But when I called my provider - Voicestream. I got replies like -
hey if you so smart - stop it yourself.
Little spam is ok, since there is nothing they can do about it anyway.
Phones are public so spam will always come.
The only way to fix it is to change the number...
I hate this brainless morons who wrok in cell tech support....
Thanks again for lunch it was great!
Best regards,
Steve
Anyone know what this SPAM means? I seem to get it everyday now
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
When this day arrives I will switch to whichever phone company doesn't spam me. If need be I will never upgrade my phone again. I get enough spam already.
Well so far since Nextel has released the email web browsing with their phones, my previous employers signed up for the service. Since day 1 spam has always popped through, sometimes from Nextel themselves. They have good phone service but the spam part is rather unacceptable.
Havent recieved any telemarketer calls directly yet. I say this because I did get calls with people selling things and addressing me with the wrong name. I would tell them it was a cell phone and wrong person, they would apologize but still ask if I was interested in the product/service sold. Made me think that was a new tactic so that cell phone users would not get too pissed at the call.
Of course even if they had a machine that could turn water to unleaded gas I wouldnt buy it, on principle.
Why can't spammers be caught by simply looking at what it is they want us to buy and questioning the company? I would think that many spammers get a commission for buys or website hits, hence the long string of characters and/or numbers included in many links in spam (identifying you and or the spammer to the company).
MAKE YOUR TIME
Ummm... This can't happen in the United States of America. The junk fax law prohibits sending unsolicited advertisements to mobile phones: "It shall be unlawful for any person within the United States ... to make any call [other than emergency or opt-in] using any automatic telephone dialing system ... to any telephone number assigned to a paging service, cellular telephone service, specialized mobile radio service, or other radio common carrier service, or any service for which the called party is charged for the call" (47 USC 227).
The same section of law prohibits sending spam to a fax machine, which is defined so as to include any computer that has a modem.
Will I retire or break 10K?
At least in the boise market(where I sell phones) many AT&T Wirless customers, me included, have been getting spamed. Most recently an offer for DVD burners for $29.99(I wish!).
.10 cents per message to receive. So imagine receiveing spam AND paying for it.
Its unfourtunatly easy. All they need to know is the prefix's for cell phones (863,867,xxx, etc) and send mass email messages to all possible range of numbers (cellphonenumber@mobile.att.net on AT&T). One problem is nearly everone on AT&T has text messageing (SMS). Its standard. But for most, it can cost up to
Our company has about five thousand users and SPAM has been out of control. We just recently signed up with Big Fish Communications to protect us from SPAM and viruses.
The difference has been quite dramatic. Our SPAM is down over 80%, plus we have the added benefit of virus protection (they run attachments through two different engines) before things even get to our network.
The way their setup works is, you point your MX record to their network of servers so all your mail goes to them. Then they process the mail and send it on to your mail server. They have datacenters all over so even if one loses connectivity we still get our mail.
They also gave us a bunch of options for what to do with our SPAM: add a header, modify the subject, redirect to a single account or sent to their web-based tool. We use the web based tool and are really happy with it so far.
Anyway, I saw a lot of comments regarding Brightmail, and I thought I'd chime in about Big Fish. The great thing is we didn't have to purchase any hardware or software, we just had to change our MX record and we were done!
cheers!
I thought telemarketing to cell phones was already illegal. Would anyone care to enlighten us on the details? I searched on google and found a number of references to this ban, but no actual spec of the law.
I rather doubt you'd have any problem convincing a judge that SMS spam to a cell phone is legally the same as calling it to try to sell you stuff.
Have you ever wondered why you don't get calls from telephone solicitors on your cell phone? People in Europe certainly do. Why are Americans exempt?
The answer is a simple but important legal decision: it's illegal for solicitors to bother you if YOU must pay for the call. In Europe, incoming cell calls are free, but in the U.S. you pay a per-minute charge for the privilege of answering calls.
Text messaging spam will be illegal only if it costs the victim money. Unfortunately, providers are moving to flat monthly rates for text messaging services. I expect this will become a burgeoning spam market.
Sincerely,
Brock Arnason
The problem with email is that the end user doesn't actually pay for it. If you are charged $0.05 for each incomming message, then not only will you have legal grounds to sue, (e.g. $1.00+legal fees!) but people spending $5.00/day for spam will REALLY be motivated to start suing. It's the perceved lack of value of e-mail which has allowed spam to prosper.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Mod me down to -1. This is a rant.
I have very strong views on spam and unwanted advertising. I have two e-mail addresses, one for friends and one for everything else. Guess which one gets the spam?
Advertising is done because it generates revenue. Fine. They want money and want to get their product out to the masses so that they can make their money.
Fine.
When I hear a commercial I evaluate it to see if it is annoying to me. If it is insulting or annoying, even if it is a product that currently "can't live without" I live without it, at least until the bad advertising campaign is over.
In a nutshell I reward the companies that advertise in a way that doesn't offend me and punish the ones that do offend me. While I am one person and this one person has zero effect on the bottom line I am willing to keep fighting my own little battle in my own little way, even if it means having no effect other than making me feel good.
What would it take to make the companies realize that certain forms of advertising are unwelcome? Since the only thing that they understand is revenue, what would it take for people to have a noticable effect on companies' revenue stream?
Boycott the companies that offend you. If enough people (and this seems highly unlikely) were to do this AND let the companies know that continuing this insulting, intrusive, and idiotic form of advertising is counterproductive then perhaps they would rethink their marketing structure and redeploy their efforts in known and productive ways. Of course, getting the public to do something that requires forethought and determination might be asking just a little bit too much.
Perhaps another way would be to notify the companies enne mass (e.g. petition) to inform them that if you see spam on your e-mail account or on your cell phone then you will cease and desist buying their products until the advertising campaign ends.
Enough about what I think. What do you think?
"Giving money and power to governments is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." - P.J. O'Rourke
Locust - The SMS text message community and e-mail service, which was saved last year, (partly due to the Slashdot Article), already has anti-spam facilities, see their SPAMKILLER command.
This utilises a number of internet spam databases, as well as the distributed checksum clearing house.
It also has a number of custom rule based filters, to filter out spam inside emails (eg: sponsors messages on free email and legal disclaimers etc)
Oh, and you can also opt-out of some UK SMS spam here
You are charged to recive SMS's in the US?
Yes. IANAL, and I don't know much about paging services, but I'm pretty sure that SMS is considered an unspammable "paging service" under U.S. law, and paging services typically charge a nominal fee per month, not per message received, if that's what you were thinking.
Will I retire or break 10K?