Wireless Spam?

An Anonymous Coward asks: "Recently I've begun to get spam on my e-mail equipped cellphone. Now, you have to realize I took every precaution to make sure this never happened: I have never used that e-mail address anywhere; I have an alias set up on my server that forwards to it; and I only use the alias for my own personal use. However, the spam I'm getting is not going through my server's alias to get to the phone -- I checked the logs. Multiple complaints to Voicestream's abuse address have not even evoked a response. The only way I can figure they got my address is either: Voicestream supplied it to the spammer; or the spammer entered all Voicestream phone numbers in e-mail format. Either way, I'm pissed at Voicestream. Also, I know for a fact I'm not the only Voicestream customer having this problem. The guys at work are getting the exact same spam at the exact same time. Is anyone else having this problem now? It's enough to make me drop my e-mail address on my phone. Could you imagine deleting 80 spams a day from your cellphone?"

Comments

If you think -that's- bad,

[Mordant]

just wait until you start getting spam via your major home appliances:

http://www.energy.whirlpool.com/pressrelease_06. ht ml

This is the way the world ends...

[hackwrench]

Not with a bang, not with a wimper but with flawed products and poor customer service.

The first I'd heard of this was today...

[boopus]

I had thought about this but hadn't actualy heard of it happening untill someone in the lab I was working in was complaining about getting offers for free DVD's on their cell phone just today.

The only real way to stop this is going to be getting the phone companies to stray from the phone-number@mobile.phone-company.com. Hopefully they'll catch on. It'll be far more work for them to offer you an user name instead of just using your phone numnber, so we'll see what solution they come up with. They *could* start filtering any server trying to send more than two or three messages an hour, but we'll see how that goes.

At least with my plan I don't get charged for incoming messages, but they're a high priority interupt. If I start getting spam I'll just turn off the message beep. The moral of the story? Spam sucks.

Threaten Em! (legally!)

[CyberQ]

Where did the spam come from? If it originated from a serious company and not some obscure {p0rn|make_money_fast|get_beautifull_painlessly|lo ose_50_pounds _in_1_day} outlet on the net then you could try this: Contact them with a very a polite e-mail (or in case of SMS spam: SMS) and inquire about a snail mail adress that you may use to serve a cease and desist order. The inquiry alone is often enough to end spam from that source.

You should also check if the terms of use of your service provider allows the company to distribute your e-mail address. Sometimes one forgets to check the conveniently hard to see "I don't want any valuable unsolicited consumer advice" boxes.