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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
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 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
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
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 /.)
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/
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 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.
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.
I just realized that I spend more time reading about spam on /. then I do deleting it from my inbox.
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.
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"
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?