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

Already a huge problem in Japan

[mizukami]

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.

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... :-P

Respected global players are getting into spam

[Mr_Silver]

Mobile spam is going to take off in a massive way because its more direct than email since the majority of people carry their phone everywhere and respond as soon as it bleeps.

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 ...?

Re:You pay to receive calls???

[at_18]

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.

Re:Trouble ahead.

[tcr]

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')

Making phones useless.

[Alien54]

If I get to many spams on my phone, then they have made my phone useless.

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.