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California Bans Mobile Phone Spam

Posted by michael on from the you-don't-have-mail dept.

Argyle writes "News.com is reporting that California has banned the spamming of pagers and mobile phones with unwanted text messages."

6 of 119 comments (clear)

  1. Not just text messages... by therealmoose · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The article also says that he signed bills to fight junk fax and expidiate do not call lists. Sounds like a great step forward for privacy and anti-stupidity laws!

    1. Re:Not just text messages... by srw · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I wonder how it deals with cross-border spam. That still seems to me to be the biggest problem to deal with.

  2. Known Hosts by messiertom · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why not make messages only be accepted from known "hosts" (phone numbers)? Rather like /etc/hosts.allow, but for mobile phones.

    Does such a system exist?

  3. Skepticism Time by Coffee+Warlord · · Score: 2, Insightful


    Is this really going to change anything? How many laws do we have either in creation or already existing vs email spam? Has the amount of spam lessened?

    How easy is it for a spammer (by any market) to just move their base of operations to another area, where there are no such laws? How are you going to enforce this?

    Really, I could declare a ban on any obnoxious thing in our world, and god knows there are plenty of such things. Enforcing most of them would be an absolute nightmare, assuming anyone even bothers to try.

    1. Re:Skepticism Time by silverhalide · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Unlike spam, which uses easiyl forged e-mail headers making it near impossible to trace, text messenging goes through the phone system and CAN be traced back to the orginiator rather trivially. I'm assuming SMS can't be easily forged. This makes such a law much much easier to enforce, as the phone company can simply look to see where the messages are coming from, and make it easier to fine the appropriate people.

  4. Re:California Laws by EvilStein · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Right, except that you don't get charged long distance when it's a text message.
    Some carriers charge per text message. Verizon and ATTWS are the only two that I can recall that do not charge you for incoming text messages, and I might be wrong about Verizon...