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."

Comments

Too expensive!

[kwishot]

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

Re:Too expensive!

[digitalunity]

The big deal is that some of us pay for SMS on a 'per-message' basis. I'm a VoiceStream Wireless(major US Wireless provider) and I only receive 100 free messages per month. After that, it could start costing me lots of money to receive shit that I don't need.

Even with a reasonably low spam rate of 3 per day, that pretty much takes care of all of my monthly messages. Seeing as I actually use SMS for my own needs, I could see spam costing me an extra 5-10$ month; at which point I'm gonna start sending out bills to spam senders.

Re:Too expensive!

[kwishot]

Spammers dun care, it's still free for *them*! =P
That would be a good way to get back at someone, though.... email bomb their SMS? =P
-kwishot

Re:Too expensive!

[digitalunity]

Yeah, get this. To top off my SMS spam, one *feature* of my VoiceStream account is an email address consisting of my phonenumber bound to SMS. All of the email on that account is automatically sent to my phone. I've been extremely careful to keep that email address off the internet. All it takes is one spam harvester and no amount of laws or lawsuits could keep my phone bill low!!!!!!

Mobile Phone Spam

[Pete (big-pete)]

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.

Hard to report....

[kwishot]

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

not a big problem compared to e-mail

[m0RpHeus]

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.)

Hold on just a minute...

[r2ravens]

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.

Re:Telemarketer calls

[Sycraft-fu]

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.

Re:I forsee this as a good thing.

[dtr20]

I can see a whole new charging mechanism which will solve this. Different sorts of data demand different prices (for example):

1. Stuff the user wants - $30 per megabyte.
2. Stuff the mobile operator wants you to have - free
3. Stuff 3rd party advertisers people want you to have - $5 per megabyte to the advertiser.
4. Stuff 3rd party advertisers are desperate for you to have - $5 given to the user?

(don't forget that SMS is of the order $1000 per megabyte!)

The operators are going to want to use the new capabilities of the phones to advertise and pay to use the real estate on your screen. They want to advertise their services...because they can and it'll make them money! So they will be happy to spend unused network capacity on this at no charge to the user.

Re:Trouble ahead.

[Dufffader]

Lets hope some operator managed to see it in a different way. They could create a premium service where you pay and get no spam, and a free service plan where you get loads of junk but get to save some money.

In that way, everyone will be happy.

Technicality

[nochops]

"...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.