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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."
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.
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.
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
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/
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 live in Europe, and it actually depends on the country you are in. Here in Italy, most cell phones have pre-paid cards: you buy 25 Euros worth's of minutes, and use that to make calls, until they run out.
For incoming calls, there's absolutely NO charge. Even more, some cell phone providers will "recharge" your account for every received call (which is a way to reduce the average bill with a more "sexy" slogan).
The only occasion where I pay for incoming calls is when I am outside my country.
Amusing point (:-), but I think you have the key point.
I think there hasn't been a big crackdown on email spam because most people see it as an annoyance - Joe Users perhaps 'do their email' in one sitting, and delete the spam there and then.
I find that people tend to stop what they are doing to check their messages, because they tend to be significant, from family or friends.
I can imagine a huge groundswell of anger about SMS spam, and it will only take one idiot causing a pile-up on the freeway whilst checking a spurious message for the media to pick up on this and label the spammers a new pariah.
(Of course it would be the fault of the driver - but it's the same principle as the media labelling the web evil, because it's 'all about pr0n and pipe bombs')
Information wants to be beer.
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"
At least none of the European carriers I am familiar with charge for incoming calls or SMSs. If anyone tried that, the company would go tits up in a month, its premises would probably end up trashed by a riotous mob of angry clients and the owners would have to spend years in class-action court battles
Yes, but the arrangement has always been like that with European carriers (when not roaming), just as US carriers have always charged differently (AFAIK).
I think it's all down to what people are used to.
On a similar theme, I think it's significant that email spam has been a daily reality since most ordinary people got hold of email accounts. Where I live, SMS/text spam is still really quite rare. When people start being inconvenienced when using a service that was previously useful, I think they will make a big fuss.
I think it's largely to do with consumer expectation, and mobile phones are now a huge part of popular culture at least here in the UK.
Having said that, the younger end of the market might become desensitised to it because of stuff like this...
Information wants to be beer.
1. Receive annoying SMS message on phone about the big sale a Joe's Electronics Emporium 1 block away.
2. Go to Joe's Electronics Emporium and ask for the manager.
3. You to Manager: "I received this message on my phone about your sale. Because of it, I will NEVER buy anything here EVER and will warn all of my friends not buy here as well."
The scary thing would be if they moved to this model without any kind of opt-in.
There was a fuss here in the UK where what was essentially a change in the agreement appeared as a footnote on the monthly bill.
Information wants to be beer.
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...