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Declaring War on Mobile Phone Spam

Posted by timothy on from the paying-per-minute dept.

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."

4 of 251 comments (clear)

  1. the most annoying thing is by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  2. Re:Pricefight by cwiegand · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Actually, it IS as easy as sending email - most cellular phones also have an email address (for example, to send to an ATT mobile phone, use ##########@mobile.att.net)

    I get TONS of spam, and the ONLY company I have EVER given that number to - MSN Alerts. Hmmmm....

    --
    Define sqrt(x) as something really evil like (x / rand()), and bury it deep in a shared include somewhere.
  3. Government SPAM by BladeRider · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.
  4. Get ready for something worse -- voice spam by HiKarma · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.