Slashdot Mirror
Declaring War on Mobile Phone Spam
RugbyHoe writes "Silicon.com's Will Sturgeon reports that more than two-thirds of mobile phone users have received spam on their cell phones and raises the concern that spam will become as much of a problem on this medium as it is with e-mail. He continues with a warning that many companies that offer downloadable ring tones are guilty of 'harvesting' your phone number. Think about that the next time you think you need to annoy your neighbors with the latest and greatest fiddy-cent ring tone."
just when I thought that text message about penis enlargement was someone picking me up!
why must you dash my hopes Slashdot?!
Mike
My ringtones have been costing me a dollar each!!!
With cellular instant messages, the phone user PAYS!
So far, I've only received one spam, and I talked to my CelTelCo about it. The first 1000 messages are free, but I pay-per-message afterwards.
I'll cancel that feature if I ever get more than 3 in the same week.
I thought that was illegal, since you will pay for them to send you spam. Am I correct about this?
-kaitos
I have got 3 sim cards the first 2 were on vigin mobile a virtual provider who uses T-mobile's network and both of them got a bucketload of spams, now I've got a O2-UK sim card and that number NEVER gets phone spam.
If you're getting a lot of it now might be the time to change operator
There is no god
...I think that if you have a land line as well as a cell phone, you can probably afford to set up your cell phone as a white-list system (accepting only calls from people in your directory list on the phone's memory). I can think of a few reasons you might not want to do this, but it still seems like a pretty good solution to me.
It's hardly a surprise that this is happening though, this is really no different than what has happened with land-line phones, e-mail and ICQ/IRC in the past. Advertising expands to fill all available spaces. The only difference here is that there is a very quantifiable cost involved with cell phones (unlike the percentage-of-bandwidth types of measurement with e-mail spam). If anything this should speed up the passing of an anti-cellphone spam law. IANAL, but shouldn't the existing laws for landlines also cover cell phones in some cases anyway?
lysergically yours
i mean, come on, the second or third thing i thought when i realized text messaging was coming was that the spammers would inevitably gravitate towards it as the next big thing.
i would imagine we'll see this used to hawk more targeted, narrowly-defined products than x10 cameras.
i hope.
ed
Admittedly I don't do text messaging on my cell phone since I have better things to do, but that was my understanding.
What's next!? Eminem ringtones?
I think phone spamming will never get to the height of e-mail spamming. The reason is simple: sending out bulk e-mail costs almost nothing, sending out bulk phone messages is way more expensive. Of course there are ways around this (think cracking), but I think that will stop a lot of spammers.
In need of reliable and affordable server monitoring?
In Europe the person *sending* the SMS message pays. This seems like a pretty effective way to stop spam as well!
...He continues with a warning that many companies that offer downloadable ring tones are guilty of 'harvesting' your phone number.
Yeah I'll think of that evertime I hear my boss's cell phone's lovely redition of "the Entertainer"... and smile with glee!!!
I went to battle MC Escher but drew a blank
My state has a "Do Not Call" list which I can sign up with to opt-out of unsolicited marketing calls at home. What about cell phones? Do they fall under these types of laws in most\some\any states?
I don't have text messaging on my phone, so I don't know how easy it is to spoof the system and to make vast numbers of disposable text message accounts, like email spammers do. Wouldn't this be something that could be relatively easy to fix with a personal/wireless provider-wide blacklist?
Or do I just have no idea how text messaging works? (I've never really seen the point of it)
[SIG] It's like putting a moose in the blender -- a recipe for disaster!
I don't pay for it. If the sender pays, there's still hope. Since there's no such thing as a free lunch, somebody somewhere must have a name and billing address that can be sued. I've certainly not had a SPAM problem on my cell phone, in fact I don't think I've had a single SPAM message.
Of course all those "SMS your answer to XXXX to take part in the competition" all put the "We can send you commercial email" in the fine print, so I don't use it for that. But that makes it solicitated commercial email, which technically isn't SPAM. Just as all the half-hidden checkboxes on free email account sign-ups aren't either.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Vodafone starts filtering SMS-spam as of sometime this month. Here's more information but it's in dutch... I'm not sure if it's happening in the Netherlands only btw.
0x or or snor perron?!
I'd never submit my cell number online for anything and I recommend this policy for anyone.
It won't stop spam sent to random numbers, but it's better than nothing...
Well, except that it was amusing when entering Belgium you get a welcome message for Greece... Typical Orange: since it was taken over by France Telecom, it's just been one long journey downhill.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
...it costs you your soul.
Maybe it's time to simply class all the different types of spam (email, telemarketing, SMS, junk mail, FAX) together? - i.e simply have "do not contact" lists rather than different ones for each technology, so when the varblethrumpulator(TM) is invented we don't have to battle for new laws to specifically stop spamming arriving over it...
Implicit in this story is the fact that in the US, the receiver, not the sender, pays for the message. In Europe (at least in the UK) you must pay to send the message: a few cents or less if you shop around, but it is a price that the spammers have to pay which adds up if they want to do a large broadcast. The main problem here at the moment is pornographic spam sent to children's mobiles, or spam sent with premium-rate return numbers urging you to call back immediately for money/sex etc. which is annoying, but at least it doesn't cost you! In the US, the networks have a lower incentive to sort the problem out because they make money from it! (or is this no longer the case?)
However I can see the sheer volume is going to ramp up, as it has done on my phone for the last year, and people are going to complain as their phone becomes unusable... it's a definite candidate for whitelist-only blocking.
Matthew @ Bytemark Hosting
While I was in Kuwait earlier this year, I noticed the Kuwait Ministry of the Interior sent cell phone SPAM messages almost daily (in English and Arabic) with government "feel good" messages" -
"Remain calm! All is well!"
JH
j.
The trouble is that spam filtering is hard to do, because anybody can send email to whatever address your service provider creates. Anybody know of a way to force email going to that address to first pass through another server, where it can be filtered? Any MX record tricks? I can't see any way to do that. Ideally the service providers would also offer web-mail service for your phone emails, where every email that gets sent to your phone is also stored on that server, and you can read them later and tag your spams, and then they do Bayesian filtering on those. But telecoms always have such hysteresis about adopting new ideas, I doubt we'll see that anytime soon.
Of course as phones begin to run real operating systems rather than some proprietary Nokia OS, and it gets to be easier to write applications for them, you could just do filtering right on the phone. My 3360 doesn't seem to have any options like that, and I can't find much info on how to write applications for these phones either. But, I've only gotten 3 or 4 SMS spams in over a year, so far so good...
Two thirds of who? Unless they surveyed the soccer moms, the 15 year old kids etc- I'd guess the statistic is heavily biased. For example, if it was an internet survey, you just nix'd a HUGE percentage of the population- a percentage of the population which is highly unlikely to have their #'s published on the internet, or use SMS, or even know what the hell SMS is- and I bet companies that send SMS messages to you legitimately(news/sports updates, and the article-mentioned ringtones) are happily selling out every address.
I've -never- recieved spam on my phone. Why? I don't give it to anyone unless they -need- it. I also don't advertise it on my webpage. I don't use sports/news/weather alert crap. There are groups of people who have to give their # out to clients etc, and who put it on their company/personal webpages. They're gonna get spam, that simple.
So where'd that statistic come from? If you scan through the article, you find the source:
"A recent survey conducted by Silicon.com reveals that 69 percent of respondents have received spam on their mobile phone." (side note: the entire article is actually from Silicon.com, some two-bit site).
So, we have a no-name site giving no information about how the survey was conducted(online? People off the street? Telephone? Magazine card? Mobile device convention? All will return drastically different results). We have no information about the demographics of the respondants, and whether they match cell phone users as a whole. Thus it is impossible to verify their claim of "all cell phone users".
When are people going to learn that you CANNOT generalize? You MUST be specific. As an example(and not implying that this is the exact situation in the story)- "Two thirds of respondants at a mobile communications conference said they had received spam on their cell phone". Yet some marketdroid would happily turn that into "two thirds of cell phone users get spam on their cellphone!"
Please help metamoderate.
So I suggest the following things to be done:
My number is one digit off from a local radio stations contest line, does that count as spam?
I badly want to answer "You WIN, come down to the station in the next hour", then turn the phone off.
Code of Federal Regulations, Title 47, Volume 3, Parts 40 to 69
Sec. 64.1200 Delivery restrictions.
(a) No person may:
(1) Initiate any telephone call (other than a call made for emergency purposes or made with the prior express consent of the called party) using an automatic telephone dialing system or an artificial or prerecorded voice,
(iii) 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
* Q
P.S. If you don't get this note, let me know and I'll write you another.
AT&T wireless provides an email->SMS gateway already. phonenumber@mobile.att.net will send an SMS to whatever poor shmuck has the number. As far as I can tell, there is no filtering, because I get an average of 4 spams per day on my phone now. It has been getting steadily worse over the last year.
I've never posted my phone number with the domain or used it anywhere, but 10 million spams will cover a whole area code and hit quite a few cell phones, especially if you target the new area codes overlaid specially for mobile devices. Alternately, spammers could harvest phone numbers online (e.g. resumes, personal pages) and compare them against online phone directories, assuming a greater probability of hitting a cell phone with an unlisted number.
The latter is my pet theory for how my own problem got so bad.
I'd like AT&T to implement some filtering and/or a whitelist option.
Just my 2 cents. Take it or leave it. ~Kirk
Why should the receiving end of the phone pays for messages send by someone else? The cell phone companies are idiots for sending text messages for free!!!
I've said it before... we need to outlaw all forms of intrusive advertising. By intrusive, I mean directed directly at a recipient (each ad sent one at a time). TV commercials are not such types of ads, but junk (physical) mail, spam, cellphone spam, fliers on your doorknob, fliers handed out in public, and even a salesperson saying to you in a public noncommercial place (not in a store) "Hi how are you today...." It all needs to be made illegal. No freedom of speech issues; there will still be viable (legitimate) ways a business can advertise. Word of mouth, however, is the only legitimate form of advertising. All others are illegitimate but necessary evils (better to have commercials on tv than have to put in a quarter). But all this "direct marketing" should be completely illegal, in every possible form, current or yet-to-be developed. As far as I'm concerned the Direct Marketing Association is a criminal organization. They're almost as bad as NAMBLA.
If we don't outlaw (with SEVERE punishment; jailtime and fines) direct marketing/advertising, eventually all technology will be rendered useless. Write your congressman....
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
Jeebus, if I hear another one of fiddy-cent's songs...
Check out http://mbuzzy.com if you have a SprintPCS phone.
All advertising is evil and corrupts anything it touches. Just look what its done to professional sports.
You're expected to pay for ring tones?
I just received my first cell phone (part of my new job), which has 4,289 ring tones built-in, 4,288 of which are horribly obnoxious. So one of my first impulses was to see if there was a way to download an arbitrary .WAV file to the phone and have it be used as the ring tone.
Strange. There doesn't seem to be a consistent way of doing this. And I kept bumping into Web sites offering catalogs of ring tones -- for a "nominal fee." I thought to myself, "Self, people can't possibly this gullible or lazy, can they?"
Now I'm starting to get the impression that the only way to download that data into the phone is to pay someone an outrageous sum to do it. Am I the only one who thinks this is fscked in the head? It may have a radio in it, but ultimately it's a computer, and getting data in/out of computers is supposed to be easy.
Who organized this? Have they caught him yet?
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
This will do more to change SPAM laws than anything else.
Let's be blunt, SPAM is an issue, but most well paid managers either have SPAM filters running on their network or a secretary who sorts through their mail for them.
This will annoy the people who carry cell phones, and they don't have IT departments and secretaries sorting through their cell phone for them.
This will harass the high power salesman who shows off what hot S*** he is by taking phone calls in meetings.
I'm tempted to list off other situations where this will really piss people off, but I won't bother.
Let your imagination run wild, and keep in mind there are people who can't tell the difference between the first "Incoming call" ring and the tone their phone makes, and as a result could find themselves dashing out of the shower for what they think is an important call.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
It can't be that hard to put a simple whitelist filter and a simple web-based management UI in place.
If they don't do that or something else to stem the tide of spam, they'll find themselves minus one customer; the reason I'm with them now is because they're the only provider for the phone I like to use (Samsung SPH-I300) but the major reason I like the phone is because I can use it to ssh to my server from the road -- and if I have to turn off Internet access to kill the spam, I may as well shop for a new phone and a new provider.
And yes, I think the policy of tying phones to providers is part of the problem, but I don't see that changing in the US any time soon.
SPAM is the "processed meat product" manufactured by Hormel. Spam is unsolicited email (and text messaging now, I guess).
I've never had a single email spam to my phone email account, but I also never really use it (once emailed a friend who did have his phone on, but happened to be reading his email at that moment. Ah, technology!). As for text messaging, I don't have it, and see no point.
[SIG] It's like putting a moose in the blender -- a recipe for disaster!
It is worse for each individual cell-phone user because their is a clearly identifiable cost involved. That call costs the recipient money.
It is not worse because legislation already exists related to unsolicited phone calls. Emails have been evading that because the technology didn't even exist until the last decade.
I was taking one day at a time, but then several days got together and ambushed me. (from a Rhymes with Orange comic)
...and should be illegal. I want to be careful not to make an assertions that would jeopardize the 1st Amendment, but I feel that telemarketing in general is unethical. Here's my reasoning:
I pay a lot of money for various phone services (> $100/month). Advertising is not one of those services. My phone is not a free ride for marketers.
When telemarketers use the phone line to reach my phone, they are getting a free ride on a service for which I am the one who pays. In a very real sense, I am paying for someone else to have the ability to advertise to me. This is just ridiculous. My land line (which I am essentially required to maintain in order to have certain other utilities) might as well be a direct connection to commercials 24/7. Literally, something like 1 call in 100 is not phone spam. That means I'm paying $20-something dollars per month for the privilege of receiving advertisements. Ridiculous. Would I do this willingly?! Of course not. Do I have a choice? Apparently not. My phone and my wallet are held hostage by telemarketers.
In the UK, SMS spam is starting to become a real problem, but it seems people obey the TPS system. Register your number at http://www.tps-online.org.uk and say goodbye to your troubles. I registered my number a little under a year ago and I haven't got any spam since.
In Finland the caller always pays, and it is illegal to send spam or try to sell stuff via sms. No offence but in most countries people are trying to figure out what Americas cellphone companies are trying to accomplish, cause they just dont seem to know what they are doing.
I thought fiddy-cent was a website from which one could download ring tones (for half a dollar each). But Nooo, Fiddy Cent is some sort of "rap artist", I guess. If it doesn't hit my classic rock presets, it's off my radar. Maybe I should broaden my musical horizons... Nah!
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
In Hong Kong, it costs $ to send sms. So, no one sends spam or has $ to send spam. However, company do pay cellular service providers for phone # (trust me, your cellular service provider sells your # and even your phone record for behavior tracking.) and pay to send message (promotions) to those #. Since it costs $, promotional mesg is not very often.
I wonder if telemarketing laws would apply? I know it is not a voice call they are making, but if they send a message to a number that is on a do not call list could they be fined?
http://www.windmeadow.com/
Vodafone NL announced a spam filter for all it's customers today. For free.
Telemarketing = Phone Spam
:-)
Wait till the do not call list is implemented
Before I got call intercept service, everytime I got a telemarketing call on my land phone line , this was my conversation with the telemarketer:
Telemarketer - "Sir, my name is Poor_Kid and I am calling on to let you know about our new offer called Rip_you_off"
Me - "Why did you call me on my cellphone"
Telemarketer - "Sir, I am sorry. I did not know that it was your cellphone number"
Me - "You bet it is !! Now take my cellphone number off of your call list."
Telemarketer - "Will do sir. You have a good day."
Before I got call intercept service, everytime I got a telemarketing call on my land phone line , this was my conversation with the telemarketer:
Telemarketer - "Sir, my name is Poor_Kid and I am calling on to let you know about our new offer called Rip_you_off"
Me - "Why did you call me on my cellphone"
Telemarketer - "Sir, I am sorry. I did not know that it was your cellphone number"
Me - "You bet it is !! Now take my cellphone number off of your call list."
Telemarketer - "Will do sir. You have a good day."
You think SMS spam is bad, soon we'll see voice spam. Yes, it's already illegal within most countries to call somebody to play a recording, but the price of the telecom infrastructure is getting low enough to make it productive to do from overseas.
Unlike email and SMS spam, content analysis, filters and bayes will not help you deal with voice spam. The only thing you can do is track high volume users and shut them down.
And caller-ID has less security than you think.
Voice spam will be a curse on VoIP where there are not per minute costs, just bandwidth costs. And while there is security there in the specs, it is rarely implemented.
Solutions will be harder to find here.
According to California Business and Professions Code 17538.41 et seq., mobile phone spam is illegal and the victim may recover $500 plus court costs should he bring an action against the spammer.
Zaphod B
When duplication is outlawed, only outlaws will have
It's very hard to send SMSs anonymously in large quantities. Goverments should just fine companies found guilty of spam.
I thought that making a telemarketing call to a cell phone was against was prohibited. Also, that the owner of the cell phone can actually receive compensation paid by the telemarketer by means of a fine? Maybe this is only for Michigan or the law is in the process of being enacted. There are three cell phones in my family and we've never received any telemarketing calls before. I looked around and found this but I could not find any thing else related to restriction specifically with mobile phones.
Nike had it right. Just do it.
Give the jerks a hard time. If they can't dial a phone number, then they deserve to suffer.
Hell, pretend they're on the air on a ten minute delay. String them along for a bit and then have them come in for the additional prizes they won as a result of answering your BS questions correctly.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
The problem is already pretty bad, and the worst part is that the worst offenders are the Telefon companies. Telefonica is constantly sending me SMS messages saying they will let me send 10 messages for free, or suggesting that I might want to change to a different plan etc. It's even worse when roaming outside of Spain. When in Franc for example, every time I change from one carriers tower to another or go under a tunnel, I get a new SMS saying "welcome to France! If you want to check your voice mail on the road, blah blah blah" That pretty much makes the phone more annoying than useful, since it's beeping with a new SMS all day long.
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
This is not a joke: I would not mind phone ads, under certain (not current) circumstances.
In the same way that I like advertisers to subsidize the creation of Futurama (well, past tense) and for me to watch reruns of Columbo, I would happily allow advertisers to pay for my phone use.
How? Imagine a system where between each phone call, you agree to listen to an advertisement, which would be (you guessed it) *very* closely tailored to you. e.g., no tampax ads for men, no thinning hair cures for men for 16-year-old girls.
Would I like to have *unsolicted* spam sent to me? No. Would I voluntarily let through a few ads each day in exchange for a bill of zero dollars? Yes.
Note there are a lot of permutations here, could be a limit of free calls, longer ads for more air time, maximum call length without hitting a surcharge, etc.
I would not want an hour of this, but there's probably a happy medium. Ask yourself, are you completely opposed to letting advertisers subsidize other things? And if the answer is No, wouldn't you rather let the spammers (who could be "advertisers") at least chip in toward the useful side of things?
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Do you really need the internet on your phone in the first place? I haven't found a need for it yet. I never use SMS or email to the phone (incoming our outgoing). i don't want to go to web pages on the phone. Ring tones are so damn annoying I refuse to use them. The games you download are cheesy, I don't want to sit there staring at a double sized postage stamp screen playing a lame game.
If I'm away from my computer I don't want to see any email! If people want me they call me and I decide if I want to talk to them or not based on caller ID. If I don't answer then either I don't want to talk to them or I'm in a situation where answering would be rude, but its up to the caller to guess which one is correct. If they email the phone they know that I got it unless it bounces back. I don't want that.
So whats the point?
I'm sick of hearing about the "War on" this or the "War on" that. As a civilization we're well past this cheap and easy metaphor. Why "war on" anything? How well have our past "Wars" gone:
- LBJ's war on poverty
- Nixon's war on cancer
- Reagan's war on drugs
- W's war on terrorism
To paraphrase the best source for "War" info: remember when we had that war on drugs and now there aren't drugs anymore?Seems having a "War on" something makes it omnipresent and ustoppable.
-dameron
"Uh hello?"
"HI! How would YOU like to be the first on your block to buy a mint commerative Asian penis enlarging hair restoring stay hard college loan credit reducing pyramid scheme from Africa?"
"Capn' Taco! It's for you."
IN RIGHTWING USA incoming phonecalls CHARGE YOU!
--
http://goatse.cx
The SMS Spammers, too, have a price point. Maybe they will find they can tolerate having to spend a cent per message sent in the way some email Spammers have found they can tolerate losing accounts at a rate of one per minute. I don't think MMF scams are that lucrative, but who knows?
But what happens if the price point for the SMS providers and the price point for the SMS Spammers are compatible? You won't see SMS providers kicking SMS Spammers off their network as long as they pay their bill.
In a way, this has already happened in email, thus our spam problems there. It also seems to have happened (to some extent) with telemarketing. I don't know if we'll see this problem develop with SMS, but I do belive many many services are vulnerable to this threat. Will we eventually see a problem of IM spamming (more than we already have)? What about SPAM files on P2Pnetworks? (Oh wait; we've seen that one too.) I wonder how easy it will be to tie a SPAMblaster into a SIP-phone implementation for automated telemarketing once SIP phones become commonplace? I wonder how long after that we'll see a SIP-enabled PROCMAIL filter.
More generally; are we as a society willing to tolerate such SPAM-cancer in all of our communication networks, or will we eventually evolve into a society where we cannot even talk to each other unless we've already been whitelisted?
Free Speech means nothing if we all chosen to go deaf. I sense bad Juju here.
The thing about things we don't know is we often don't know we don't know them.
I don't ever get spam on my Nextel phone.
Common sense is not so common.
Don't get gadgets that support text messaging :-) I've had my current cell phone for 3 years and despite the crappy service (it's a Nextel, what do you expect?) I'm happy to say that I am 100% spam free!
Japan has always been a bit ahead of us in the cellphone business, and they have fixed this problem. No longer does your cellphone have ##########@att-mobile.net, but instead its a 20 character random string (ex: d3f65f2ks8iure0kh8b7@docomo.ne.jp), with the option of setting your own alias as well.
This doesnt entirely alievate the problem, but it does increase the time needed for a while loop to hit the entire user base. Supposedly this has helped.
The number of characters might be variable as well (not sure about this), which would increase the time needed even more.
I know back when I used a pager it was a simple mater of structuring a url in order to send my self a page. I imagine that someone could do the same bloody thing on any website that offers web->SMS services
Unlike email->sms which typicaly is a seperate service, web->sms pretty much covers anyone who chooses to use SMS messaging.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
If you have your own mail server, set up an address that forwards to your phone's address. Then you can whitelist that address and just give that out. So for example, myphone@mydomain.com goes to ##########@mobile.att.net.
Of course this won't stop programs from sending directly to your number. But in the future if you change providers you can just change the forwarded address and your friends don't need any update.
J
I find it amusing that as I read this article, Slashdot is displaying banner ads for "49 cent ringtones and graphics!", "Free Nokia Ringtones", and "RingtoneJukebox.com."
I found out through several hours of talking to morons at the help desk of Cingular Wireless (Texas area split off from Southwestern Bell) that SMS messages are sent via email addresses through a central server system. They don't even run it--they simply contract for their numbers to be funneled through the system--so Cingular couldn't even add features (or remove them, in my case).
I asked them to block all SMS to my phone, because I never used it and knew nobody would use it to contact me. They denied me three times, and eventually I wound up speaking with an engineer who had "never thought of" sending spam through an automated script to a block of easy to guess email addresses at a known server with public accessibility and no password protection for connections. Duh.
He then proceeded to inform me that all phones get firmware upgrades and such via SMS, and that's impossible to shut off or your service would terminate. So, until they start building whitelist filtering to each phone, you can't do jack shit about it.
Any connection between your reality and mine is purely coincidental.
The way I see it, there is no need to harvest mobile numbers using free phone ringtone services etc. Surely mobile phone numbers can be targeted for sms sending in much the same way as a wardialler - just working through the numbers.
Good as the idea might sound, you'd be going up against an industry worth more than many small countries. As the largest and most successful parasite in history, advertising will be very hard to kill, and even harder to restrict. As soon as you "outlaw intrusive advertising", you get mired in the minutae of defining "intrusive". You can bet that there will be more than a few deep-pocketed lobbyists who'd like to contribute to that definition.
Mail? Put "slashdot" in the subject to pass the spam filters.
AT&T Wireless gives you free incoming text messages (unlimited)
I refuse to have a mobile phone (or pager for that matter)
Little story about why, for those that care:
When I was a building inspector I was actually between the walls of a University dorm. To get there, it took about 45 minutes of going thorugh a boiler room and all kinds of other hidden and remote access points.
While I was in there, my pager when off with the home office number. Knowing how long it took to get where I was, I ignored it.
Five minutes later, the same number came back with a "911" attached, of course meaning an emergency.
As I extracated myself from within the walls, the pager kept going off with "911" attached and it got worse and worse.
As I rushed to the phone to call the office, visions of an environmental meltdown were running through my mind, and I feared the worst.
As I got in touch with the secretary, and asked what the emergency was, her response was "oh, no emergency, I just wanted to know if you'd be back before close today"
All that crap for that?!? After that, I tossed the things in the trash and claim I lost them.
Never again will I have important work disrupted by some idiot with access to a phone.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
someone's been listening to too much george carlin. :-D
As soon as you start getting charged for bandwidth, email spam is against the TCPA. Didn't they just determine that DSL was a telecommunication device? Sue everybody!
I think that is exactly what is happening. My wife and I are Verizon customers on their family plan. Our phone numbers start with the same first 8 numbers (including area code) but end in two different numbers. We both have received some sort of spam in Spanish from a hotmail address. It looks like they are just sending spam to the equivalent email address for our phones. And each one costs $.02 to receive. However, I believe I get to see who the message is from before receiving and being charged.
Forget the whales - save the babies.
Free service and helps like a charm.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
> And yes, I think the policy of tying phones to providers is part of the problem, but I don't see that changing in the US any time soon.
It changes in November when when Number Portability requirements take effect.
[
how easy would it be to write a script for this cellphone company's web-based text messaging service? http://www.rogers.com/english/wireless/sendpcs.htm l
Spammers may not even bother harvesting your numbers.. since brute-forcing of operator's number space is much easier and accurate than with e-mails.
Howdy! I am a developer for a Sprint Ringtones site (3gwiz.com/3gvisioncorrection.com). We do NOT spam anybody. Period. End of story. No spams. Nada. Zip.
Yes, we do have a ton of email addresses that we possbily could do it two. But we don't. And we won't.
Why you may ask?
We are geeks. This means we won't do to you we wouldn't want done to us. Phone spam is the lowest of the low form of spam as the end user (in the US at least) has to directly pay or it, or it at least comes out of a bucket of allowed SMS messages that they have paid for already.
This means the end user can see the physical cost of the spam. While traditional spam may not affect your pocketbook directly, this does.
Shawn Pryde
Lead Developer
3gwiz.com
"It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong." - Voltaire
Hang your head in shame.
"Stop whining!" - Arnold, as Mr. Kimble
"Think about that the next time you think you need to annoy your neighbors with the latest and greatest fiddy-cent ring tone."
How and why did such a racist comment find it's way to the front of slashdot? I guess all the "openmindedness" on Slashdot is all well and good, until someone wants to take pot shots at a black rap artist, and how certain people speak.
I'd hope this article is edited to remove the comment...or do the editors find colloquialisms of certain minorities a joke to make fun of on the front page?
I'm a CA resident who got a text message spam a couple days back from "4mytmobile.com". Did anyone else get this message? Did you save it?
Post back here.
(BTW-- 4mytmobile.com is registered to a guy in Huntington Beach, CA.)
I did not save it but I sent a letter to Mr Israel Aceves (who lives in Newport Beach, CA, not Huntington Beach) advising him of my intent to file suit should he repeat the spam.
Zaphod B
When duplication is outlawed, only outlaws will have
Literally, something like 1 call in 100 is not phone spam.
You might try to get a friend. That way the percentage will go up.
That's partly why they all have shiney new infrastructure while the U.S. is struggling to roll out last-generation technology!
I know! Let's bomb ourselves back into the stoneage, and then give ourselves the money to rebuild our industries with the latest equiptment!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Good thing that declaring war on a problem will bring about a much quicker resolution.
Kinda like the "War on Terror" and the "War on Drugs..."
I've never received any mobile phone spam on my current Telus phone number (416)992-1254.
You're right. It was Newport Beach. I got off the phone with the California Office of Privacy Protection. They said I was the first person to call in about Mr. Aceves. But if enough people complained, there was a chance that criminal files could be filed. Otherwise, it's up to a civil action. Apparently all you have to do is go to your local courthouse to get the forms.
I did save my message and still have it in the phone. I don't know if the best thing to do is just file the action or send a warning as you did.
Even though you deleted the message, you can still recover a record of it from www.tmobile.com. The text isn't available, but the fact the spam mail was sent is.
Know anyone else in CA w/a T-Mobile phone? A class-action would be even more fun. At $500 a violation, hopefully the press such a judgement would garner would stop anyone else who's even considering such spam in California.
What is SMS?
Spread the RC luvin'
I'm wondering, shouldn't it be possible to set up your own GSM antenna in a heavily populated area and send a spam SMS to every GSM number that's in the neighbourhood
(then immediately turn it off again to avoid detection...)
Using it is sort of like a cross between AIM and email, but (unless you have one of those new phones with the nifty keyboards) with a hideously annoying and slow input method.
Most carriers also offer some sort of a bridge between SMS and internet email--you can send email from your phone, and people can also email you at [yourphone'snumber]@[yourcellphonecarrier].com. This last thing is where the problem with spam has been happenning...email spammers have started to send messages into the SMS networks, generally by just sending thousands of messages with random-number addresses and hoping that a few will get through to real phones.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Commercial speech can be regulated only if the government's interest in creating the restriction is substantial. The regulation must directly address that substantial interest and cannot be more restrictive than is necessary serve it. See, for example, Lorillard Tobacco Co. v. Reilly, (2001) 533 U.S. 525; Central Hudson Gas & Elec. Corp. v. Public Serv. Comm'n of N. Y., 447 U. S. 557 (1980).
So while commercial speech can be regulated, it can't be outlawed altogether without repealing the First Amendment. And that? Would be bad.
I've never had any mobile spam.
But more and more sources are asking for my mobile number.
Sure I can resist giving it out via TV voting but at some point I'm going to make a mistake, and once it's out that's it, so ->
perhaps there is a way I can give out a temporary number, similar to temporary email services?
A blog I run for the wealth
The first spam I got on my phone, I ignored.
The second one from the same company, I looked up who owned that number and decided to never do business with them. (Not that I was in the market for a mortgage, anyways.)
The third time, I went to every porno free-for-all links page I could find (in the first 20 pages of google results) and submitted a link reading something to the effect of "FREE PHONE SEX! CALL NOW! (XXX) XXX-XXXX!"
Oddly, I never received a fourth spam. It's too bad, I had the explosives all mixed up and everything.
Don't subscribe to text messaging services. Use the phone as just a phone. No valid caller ID, No answer, No problem. Clean out the voice mail from a landline to save airtime.
My company requires me to carry a pager. Those who know the pager number can page me. Pagers generaly don't get spam. The service prividers do follow up on complaints. In 4 years, I received one text spam on the pager.
The truth shall set you free!