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

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.

You can fight back

[Anonymous Coward]

I've already received SMS spam. The message, repeated 3 times over the course of a month, read "Refinance for 4% - Call Ed - 520-xxx-yyyy" (I don't remember the actual number).

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 /.)

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

much like

[martissimo]

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

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 ...?

Spamming mobile phones is illegal in the USA

[yerricde]

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.