Slashdot Mirror
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?"
There is an epidemic in Japan with regards to cell phones. Cell phone usage is only charged to outbound calls, providing an incentive not to call anyone (but I digress...)
There is a problem wherein spammers (for lack of a better word) are calling cell phones at random and hanging up immediately. This results in a "Missed Call" type of message with an included phone number. Phone owners are thusly tricked into calling the number back and subsequently charged outrageous fees for calling a 900-style number.
It's a big problem over here. When I got my phone, I had 3 calls like that in the first day.
just wait until you start getting spam via your major home appliances:
. ht ml
http://www.energy.whirlpool.com/pressrelease_06
You can only safely forward email to a mobile phone if your service never uses the temping #@telco.com format, even "internally". My ISP is also my mobile phone provider and they go directly from my private email address to their SMS server without an extra email-2-SMS gateway. A private address I have masked by sneakemail and filtered by spamcop. (I can also cap the number of SMSes sent per 24 hours.)
on long distance calls in the U.S. on regular phones. On cellular phones they have been paying both ways, but increasingly on cell phones long distance and local are treated the same. They have recently been offering free long distance for a monthly fee on regular phones.
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.
For the last six of months I have not recieved any thing other than SPAM through my phone email. As I don't use it to send mail I canceled the option last week.
If more of us start canceleing our accounts, the mobile companies will start to take notice, especally when they keep getting 'I get to mutch SPAM' as the reasion for disconecting.
My mobile company charged me a monthley fee for the service. A monthly fee they are no longer recieving.
Wouldn't it be nice if schools got all the money they wanted and the army had to hold jumble sales for guns