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 thought that was illegal, since you will pay for them to send you spam. Am I correct about this?
-kaitos
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!
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?
Hmm, not in the UK and probably the rest of Europe as far as I know. The sender pays. I don't know what happens with roaming so I guess you might get charged to receive messages in that situation.
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.
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.
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
...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.
-1, Irrelevant
The argument can be made that no one is "initiating a telephone call" of any sort to your cellphone. Granted I haven't received a single spam of any type (voice or data) on my cellphones, ever, in 9 years, so I don't have anything to complain about.
This rule should, but does not, apply to the discussion.
Intelligent Life on Earth
> I don't get much SPAM on my cell either. The
> occasional advertisement on a game/contest that my
> cellphone provider offers, but apart from that.
You're missing the point though.. the concern isn't that people are getting "some" spam today, it's that in the future they will be getting a LOT of it if this problem isn't dealt with now.
Rewind ten years and ask how many people were concerned about email spam then apply that to this situation.
Precedents should be set now (no I don't mean in a legal sense but that would help I guess) so that spammers in the future are convinced it's just not worth the hassle.
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
Free service and helps like a charm.
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