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."
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
Only in the USA does one have to pay to receive an SMS.
- Soup is really good.
You're oh so wrong. I happen to live in Japan, and e-mail is one of the things you use cell-phones for the most. You guessed it einstein, e-mail spam on the cell-phone. It's a *very* real problem right now, so I don't know why people are talking about it *becoming* a problem.
And by the way, I think they cellphone companies sell the e-mail adresses, or they do way too little about blocking brute-force attempts etc.
All sorts of things seem to be illegal but that doesn't really stop anyone. In Minnesota, junk faxes and automated calling (where the answering machine calls you) is apparently illegal. Yet I get a ton of that stuff. What needs to happen is for a significant number of people to start calling their attourney general to stop companies from doing this stuff.
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.
In finland you can add your name on a 'do not direct advertise to me' list. When you're name is on that list it is illegal to advertise to you by e-mail, mail or phone (including sms) or by any medium that you can think of. While your name is on the list you cannot accidentally take part into a competition (for which the fine print says that you will receive commercial sms messages), since it's illegal to advertise directly to you.
Actually even though I would ask some Finnish company to send me commercial e-mail, they cannot do that since they can still be sued. From what I heard (from a friend whose company does solicitated e-mail advertisements, not spam) this actually is so and the companies take the prospect of being sued very seriously. After a couple of incidents they would lose their permit to advertise directly to customers.
Of course this does nothing to spam from abroad...
Sucker! ;-)
I make my own ringtones. A *gasp* normal-sounding ring, or an unobtrusive ambient beat with tones designed to be heard in different environments. I got sick of hearing lame ringtones that even an AOL'er wouldn't embed into a web page.
It's easy to do with a basic MIDI editor and a web server you are allowed to set MIME types on. Or load it using this guy's website (Flash required - he's a bit of a freak that way). He doesn't keep your phone number.
...
If you reply to the sms you can be charged for any further smses *they* send to you. This is how companies get money for weather announcement services etc.
Vodaphone is more or less as the forefront of this worrying trend.
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
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.
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.
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
I would call my carrier and demand refunds for all unsolicited commercial messages. Eventually the mobile carriers themselves will put pressure on legislators to extend unsolicited commercial call protection to text messages as well. In the U.S., it's illegal for telemarketers to call cell phones.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
There used to be something like this for residential long distance service--a company called FreeWay. You dialed a 1-800 number, and for every 15 second ad you listened to, it gave you one minute of 'talk' time to the number that you wanted to talk.
The last I heard of it, however, it went belly-up.
I disable sigs...do you?
Well, sort of. You will still get the ANI of the telemarketer's trunk line (i.e. it'll look like (321) 555-0000). With that info, you can then find out who owns that line.
Q: "Why do sound techs say 'check 1, 2'?"
A: "Cause if they could count any higher they'd be lighting techs."