US Cell Phone Users Discover SMS Spam 314
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."
Re:Easy Solution--Edit (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry. Too tired to be posting.
Davak
Pricing for receive: a North American problem? (Score:5, Informative)
(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.
It's here to stay for the forseeable future (Score:4, Informative)
Spam from Cingular's own website (Score:5, Informative)
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
Spam techniques (Score:5, Informative)
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 [natural-selection.org] A free half-life mod.
Re:only two things are certain in life... (Score:5, Informative)
Europe (Score:1, Informative)
If I for instance was ever to receive SMS spam, I would request the local appropriate authorities to look into it and the company would get automatically (eventually) fined for each of the received complaints.
Finland, the home of the cellural technology, rocks.
Re:Huh? You have to pay *extra* for SMS? (Score:5, Informative)
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
Re:simple solution (Score:5, Informative)
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!
It's not *such* a big problem here in the .uk (Score:4, Informative)
ICSTIS [icstis.org], 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 [asa.org.uk] 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 [dataprotection.gov.uk] can't be bothered to prosecute.
Re:only two things are certain in life.... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Huh? You have to pay *extra* for SMS? (Score:5, Informative)
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
Re:Won't tolerate it. (Score:3, Informative)
Personally I couldn't be without SMS though. Much more efficient than voice a lot of the time.
Re:only two things are certain in life... (Score:3, Informative)
However, mobiles have separate area codes to landlines, so its always possible for a caller to know that they're going to be charged more. It also means that you can move across the country and keep the same mobile number...
Europe (Score:3, Informative)
Finally, all of Europe even has very good legislation against spam in general:
Directive 2002/58/EC [eu.int], Article 13:
In a nutshell: Technology-neutral opt-in, with only a few, rather reasonable exceptions, but no gaping loopholes.
It's a new concept for Europe either. Now, if Americans have to suffer from spam for years whenever a new technology comes along, call your "congressperson" to explain why they don't make a law like this. Hint: Their answer (post it!) should not contain poor "red herring" excuses citing the "First Amendment" or the "Dormant Commerce Clause" if they count on being re-elected: The courts have already decided that it is perfectly constitutional to wham spam with a ban by federal law. [usatoday.com]
T-Mobile Has Filters (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Is turning off the bloody phone that horrific!? (Score:1, Informative)
Christmas and new years eve can be exceptions to that rule, though. For some reason people tend to send a lot of sms-messages at those times, sometimes even clogging the service.
(And my last phonebill was about ~30e, for the last six months. The easiest way to keep your phonebill in manageable amounts: don't call just for fun.)
Disable Text messaging on your account. (Score:2, Informative)
I can be on phone hold with some company (Dell, Kaiser, etc.) for over 20 minutes, then just as they answer, I can get a drop, and Verizon is willing to add 1 minute to my call allowance for that month. However each service call
to Verizon to do this runs 5-10 minutes of real time (no air time charges, but
who has 10 minutes to earn the equivalent of $0.60 dollars/hour? They
count on that.
Not enough competition. I was in Europe a few years back -- Israel of all
places -- *ALL* the teens had cell phones. Turns out it's about 1/10th the cost here in California. From what I've been told, California's rates
are among the worst -- so much so that I've thought of getting a phone for
outgoing calls through my parents located in another area where cell phone
rates with full roaming and free long distance running half what I pay
here.
Anyway -- I asked if I could specify a list of allowed users -- nope. Basically, anyone who knew my number and some magic incantation could send
me spam. Ironically -- at the time, I didn't know how to send my phone
text messages via an email port -- but the spammers did! So I requested
they disable the service completely.
I sure as heck don't need spam on my stupid cell phone where I have to
pay per/spam. That should be as illegal as sending unrequested faxes.
Grrr.
Re:Huh? You have to pay *extra* for SMS? (Score:1, Informative)
For example in Australia, there is no "national" mobile rate. You pay the same regardless of whether they are standing beside you, or if they are on the other side of the country. In many cases people have started using included minutes (Many plans over here have a monthly fee that prepays calls up to the amount of the monthly fee, eg $30 month with $30 included calls) to call people interstate, because depending on time of day/plan etc, it can sometimes be cheaper to call via the mobile than by a land line.
So in answer to your question, yes "national" long distance is included by virtue of not existing.
Re:Huh? You have to pay *extra* for SMS? (Score:2, Informative)
I could be on my phone 24 hours a day for the whole month and I get the same bill as I would if the phone was turned off.
The plans are out there... they are called "Unlimited Local Plans"
https://secure.gottagetone.com/zone44/products_se
Anyhow, how much do you pay for 1.5 Megabit Broadband Internet in the UK?
Re:Yeah, the easy solution? (Score:4, Informative)
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
Re:Yeah, the easy solution? (Score:3, Informative)
Examples the way sms spam works in Belgium (Score:2, Informative)
In Belgium, there are only a few main operators : Proximus, Mobistar and Base. Like that things are easy to control.
There are a few main pricing schemes : pre-paid cards and subscriptions. Pre-paid cards are more expensive per call and per sms but does not cost an extra monthly subscription - therefore they are ideal for very small customers.
And there are a few phone number types : normal and high-price. You can easily make the difference between them by how they start and by their length (length 11 are usually expensive). You could use a high-price number as a payment method, because when you own a high-price number you receive some money everytime somebody phones to you. Examples : chat, meetings, logos, secret codes to get something on Internet - instead of using a credit card payment system.
As far as I know, the receiver of a call or of a sms never pays for it if he / she is in Belgium. It is always the sender who should pay. But if the receiver is outside Belgium he will have to pay the international part of the call. It always makes me surprised when I hear it is not like that in other places (US, Russia,
Typical prices for call are between 10 and 50 cent / minute. Typical prices for sms are between 10 and 25 cent / sms. So if you want to send spam to the zillion of Belgian people it's going to cost you something
However something that happened a lot here was : people started to receive sms from a company, telling "someone thinks of you and wants a date with you : surf to www.com to discover who he/she is". They went to this website and they were told that a shy person is in love with them and wants to go out with them. If only you would discover his/her first name - because he/she is so shy and he/she does not want yo go out with you if you do not see who he/she is. Send your guesses to a high-price number. Obviously each time you would send a sms to this high-price number you would be answered : "nice try, but it is not the good answer - try again". Some people like me tried with every woman name they know
Obviously each time I tried a guess the company behind it received a few cents. They were hundred of people to try. And the most funny was nobody wanted to go out with them. At least, nobody told this company he/she wanted to go out with them...
Do somebody knows other examples?