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US Cell Phone Users Discover SMS Spam
The Llama King writes "It's a bigger problem in Europe and Japan/Asia, but as SMS text messaging or "texting" becomes more popular in the United States, its users are discovering that spammers like it too, according to this Houston Chronicle story. Cell phone companies are trying to stem the spam flood before it starts, worried that users will turn off their phones, thus denying providers revenue."
The cell phone shouldn't accept text messages from someone *UNLESS* the user has called the number previously or unless the number exists in the contacts listing.
Sorry. Too tired to be posting.
Davak
Having recently moved to Australia from Canada, I was:
(1) Surprised to see that all inbound calls, text, and airtime were free on my mobile plan.
(2) My outbound costs were ~6x greater than before (au$0.60/min vs cnd$0.10/min)
(3) My text sending costs were lowered.
(4) There was no charge for flagfall. But now fsck'ing Vodafone plans to change that. (Australia is one of the few countries where the cost of telecom seems to rise. Yech)
From a quick look into the situation, you pay nothing to receive SMS everywhere but North America.
But, you certainly pay to send SMS, which is a sure deterrent to Spam.
Hence, switch to a sender-pays model. Problem solved if the cost to send exceeds expected revenue from spamming. If current e-mail response rates (1%) hold, it'll be a non-issue.
I'd love to hear of countries outside Canada/US where there are charges to receive SMS though. That would blow this theory out of the water.
The problem with SMS spam is that it is mostly scams being operated by shady businesses, urging you to text back to this number (premium charge, or course) to win a vapour-prize, or dial-this-number-to-win etc. With the advent of SMS gateways years ago, sending bulk SMS-spam from a computer is fairly easy. Since most operators need to accept traffic from others to ensure connectivity, getting rid of the problem would involve too much pain IMO. My money is on end users having to live with it.. just like we do in the UK. The only lesson to be learnt is to be extremely careful who you give your personal information to. Treat your mobile number like your personal email address.
"I am not bound to please thee with my answers" [William Shakespeare]
Don't sign up for a mycingular.com account if you have a Cingular Wireless phone. I was (inaccurately) told by a Cingular operator that in order to get an email address (email -> SMS) for my phone I had to create an account on cingular.com.
A few months later I got a spam text message on my phone from a third party advertiser targeting cingular wireless users. The only way that could have happened is if Cingular sold my info. I was fuming mad and wrote Cingular's division headquarters. I received a phone call in response to the letter, and the woman said I did not need a cingular.com account for Email -> SMS gateway, and the only reason to sign up for mycingular.com is to download ringtones and such. (and there are far better places to get those) She cancelled the cingular.com account for me on the spot.
So beware if you do sign up at cingular.com - Cingular SPAMs you from third party advertisers!
To Cingular's credit, they were very responsive after I sent the letter.
Unfortunately though, I just got another junk message from Cingular themselves the other day, I can't even remember what they were advertising. If that happens again, it's one more nail in the coffin for them. Although I wonder if I'll get the same thing no matter what carrier I choose these days.
I wonder how long it will take before spammers start bruteforcing phone numbers at mobile.mycingular.com. (that's the email -> phone gateway, yourphone#@mobile.mycingular.com)
--Mike
I work for a wireless telco, and we have some techniques in place to guard against spammers. Nothing is 100% perfect, but we make it easier to catch.
1. Using subscriber ID's that are 16 digit long, phone+random number. (To protect against that type of subscriber ID spamming, numerical increasing.)
2. Intelligent email servers, that flag large requests and put them in queues that our NOC can monitor. Thou they have to trip the threshold.
3. Corporate customers who use SMS for dispatch, use dedicated connections. (No public connection for spammers to exploit.)
4. You can opt-out from telco originated spam, which is very few a day. (And opt-out works, not like spammers.)
Nothing is perfect, SMS is just like any other messaging system that can be abused, IM and Email. You dont want to filter to hard and block valid requests, yet you dont want spammers to eat your bandwidth.
I myself use SMS for trouble tickets, email alerts on systems, and escalation notifications. I finally directed most of my SMS to a pager instead of my phone. Dont want to mix IM's with work. And I can turn my pager off when I'm not on-call.
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WC3+AVP+CS=Natural Selection A free half-life mod.
If you work it out, then paying 5p / text message is the equavalent to paying over £450 per megabyte
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Yea, I pay $42 for 500 weekday daytime minutes, *unlimited* night (after 9 I believe, when I make most of my calls anyway) and weekend minutes, *all* including national long distance. And oh, I don't pay roaming anywhere my cell phone company has service, which is basically any metro area in the US.
Man, that's really fucked up isn't it? I'd much rather pay $0.50/min on every call I place like I used to when I used a cell phone in Europe a few years back.
-bm
OK; the US phone system is completely fucked up.
In England, you pay to send, not to recieve. At 5p a time, spamming is not economic. I have never recieved a spam sms.
Now, in Houston, if my girlfriend dumped me, I could amuse myself for hours sending her 100s of SMSs, and racking up a great big for her. Wheeeeeee!
--- My dad's political betting
ICSTIS, who regulate the premium rate telephone market - most of my SMS spams are shilling premium rate numbers, claiming that "I have won a prize" or that "someone likes me". ICSTIS have fined many spammers thousands of pounds.
There is also the Advertising Standards Authority who are now accepting complaints.
It is also illegal to use an automated dialler, but the bunch of lazy jobsworths at the Data Protection Agency can't be bothered to prosecute.
ok well try this
I pay nothing monthly (orange.co.uk or virgin.co.uk)
I pay nothing for incoming calls
I pay nothing to receve SMS messages
I pay 5p (aprox 7c per minute) for the first 2 minutes of calls made each day
I pay 2p (aprox 3c per minute) for all other minutes
to spend $42 per month I would have to use the phone every day and make over 1440 minutes of calls
just because you were too stupid to find a call plan that was sensible in europe doesnt mean nobody else can
**** lying is wrong even for sleeping dogs
Telstra has a dial-up gateway to send SMS messages - you dial a number and get greeted with a little text menu that prompts you through the process of sending a SMS message. You get charged 10c or so for each message you send and you can (i think) send 4 messages at a time before needing to redial it.
;-) countries have peering arrangements with other telco's for SMS messaging, same as for normal phone connections.
There's also a "bulk" version of the above with start and end codes etc, you can send an unlimited number of messages in one go, but you need software to do so. There's quite a few SMS messengers for PC's and modems around the place.
As everyone else has said - get the sender to pay, or don't let them send messages. Easy as that. Most civilised
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.