California Bans Mobile Phone Spam

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California Bans Mobile Phone Spam

Posted by michael on Saturday September 21, 2002 @06:59AM 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."

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Not just text messages... by therealmoose · 2002-09-21 07:02 · 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 · 2002-09-21 07:03 · 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.
Known Hosts by messiertom · 2002-09-21 07:04 · 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?
Re:Skepticism Time by silverhalide · 2002-09-21 07:20 · 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.
Re:California Laws by EvilStein · 2002-09-21 11:07 · 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...