Watch Out for Wireless Spam

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,110553,tk,dn050203X,00.asp' target='_blank'>http://www.pcworld.com/news/article...n050203X,00.asp</a><br /><br /></div>"Panelists on the second day of a three-day spam forum sponsored by the Federal Trade Commission agreed Thursday that text-based advertisements, already common in Japan and Europe, are coming to U.S. users of wireless devices. Some of those messages, inevitably, will be spam.<br /><br />While some panelists said current U.S. laws are inadequate for dealing with wireless spam, members of the cell phone industry said they're already taking steps to avoid the influx of spam that has saturated the wired Internet. Unlike the free-for-all Internet, wireless carriers are treating their networks as private property and are planning to kill off bulk text messages at gateways before they hit customer in-boxes."<br /><br />I think this is a very real fear. Spam on the desktop is irritating, but considering most people don't pay for bandwidth over their dial-up modem or DSL line, and it takes one button press to delete the spam, it's not going to stop people from using email. But on a mobile device, spam becomes a much bigger problem - most people are paying for bandwidth, and even if you have a flat-rate plan (like I do with <a href="http://www.fido.ca">Fido</a>), you're still paying with your time. GPRS is quite slow, and if getting a 30 KB HTML spam email is painful. The tools for deleting the messages aren't quite as fast as on the desktop either - and there's no Spamnet for my Pocket PC yet, so I'm very vulnerable to spam.<br /><br />Will spam stop you from using your mobile device for wireless email?

[Janak Parekh]

Fortunately (sort of), they're talking about SMS, not 30KB large messages as far as I can tell. Unfortunately, SMS is metered too, and spam can pose lots of problems. :cry:

--janak

[Jason Dunn]

Fortunately (sort of), they're talking about SMS, not 30KB large messages as far as I can tell. Unfortunately, SMS is metered too, and spam can pose lots of problems. :cry:

--janak

I think spam SMS would piss me off even more, because it's intrusive like a phone call, rather than passive like an email message.

[GregWard]

I haven't seen that much of it so far but you're right Jason - spam SMS is VERY intrusive. The worst offenders so far seem to be the networks themselves. :evil:

[Sslixtis]

Will spam stop you from using your mobile device for wireless email?

In a heartbeat. http://www.anchoredbygrace.com/smileys/heartpump.gif

[Jacob]

I have already gotten a spam text message to my cell phone.

The FIRST thing I did after that was call Verizon to have them disable text messaging on my phone.

[ombu]

I use nPop for desktop and PPC, and I carefully select my mail to read and/or save, soon I'll get wireless and I have to ask if nPop or something like that is available to read only titles and a few lines from each message working somehow on the server.

Regards.

[Peter Foot]

Fortunately (sort of), they're talking about SMS, not 30KB large messages as far as I can tell. Unfortunately, SMS is metered too, and spam can pose lots of problems. :cry:

--janak

I think spam SMS would piss me off even more, because it's intrusive like a phone call, rather than passive like an email message.

I can vouch for that - its very intrusive. I have received quite a few spam SMSs recently which is odd because not many people know my number...

[bdegroodt]

Fortunately (sort of), they're talking about SMS, not 30KB large messages as far as I can tell. Unfortunately, SMS is metered too, and spam can pose lots of problems. :cry:

--janak

I think spam SMS would piss me off even more, because it's intrusive like a phone call, rather than passive like an email message.

I just read something about McDonald's stopping this practice (I think they were doing proximity SMS spam). (http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-998830.html) I'm all for a deal, but I feel real bad for the burger flipper that's working at McDonald's the first time I get a spam SMS. They aren't going to know what to do with me. :evil:

[bdegroodt]

I can vouch for that - its very intrusive. I have received quite a few spam SMSs recently which is odd because not many people know my number...

Spamming via SMS would seem to be much easier than spamming email accounts. Reason being, you already have a valid domain. You know it's only numbers in the prefix of the email and you have 3 of 9 digits predetermined (Area codes). You only need to go through the 6 remaining digits and Excel can make short work of that.

Hey...I think I'm going to go into the business. Just kidding!

[iPaqDude]

Would it upset me? Most definately. Would I stop using text based messaging - no.

But I think this is something that each and everyone of us needs to start lobbying our respective government representatives to get some teeth into laws to prevent it from becoming as epidemic as desktop spam. It is theft, pure and simple, of bandwidth and time, and those that participate in it need to have more than just a wrist slap.

Desktop spam irritates the $()*&@ out of me :evil: , and phone solicitors get more than just rude comments from me, but when they start bombarding my wireless devices with their BS, then it's time to take off the gloves.....

What is the possibility of starting a PPCT-based forum dedicated towards tracking and helping to communicate efforts towards fighting this blight?

[ChuckyRose]

(I'm simplifying a bit, but here's how it is here in Japan) I know that here in Japan, the SPAM situation is to the point where NTT DoCoMo doesn't allow SMS messages to your phone from outside the NTT DoCoMo network. Even if you purposely activate it, you have to activate a "secret code" also so that anyone trying to send you messages at your phone number@docomo. etc has to know the secret code as well. But most people here don't really use SMS it seems. Most use e-mail(on their phones, not with a connected device like a PPC or laptop) and most services limit the size of that to about 500 single-bytes(depending on your service). To combat that SPAM, most people use some pretty crazy e-mail addresses with lots of periods and strangly placed dashes i.e.

[email protected]

While that might seem a bit troublesome, most people I know don't get SPAM on their phones. I used to have a simple address for my phone, but I started getting SPAM so I added a few dots and numbers and no more SPAM. So the downside is no SMS, but the upshot is I can give my mom my e-mail address and she can e-mail my phone from her desktop computer and not have to pay long distance charges. And the e-mail is cheap! (less than a penny for a short message)

ChuckyRose

[fmcpherson]

I've done two things to combat spam on my Pocket PC Phone Edition. First, I use nPOP and I have it configured to only download headers, so I only retrieve email that I want to read. Second I use spamcop, http://www.spamcop.net which filters out a significant amount, but not all, of my spam. Unfortunately, I am not able to use this configuration with the Smartphone and mask my "hidden" email address that Spamcop sends my email to. While there are many client-based spam filtering tools, we'll need service-based tools along the lines of spamcop for mobile devices.

[tj21]

So far most of my sms spam seems to be coming from Cingular itself. I've changed all of my preferences to not be contacted about offers but still got 3 messages from them last month.

I used to send a truncated copy of incoming email to my sms address but the amount of spam has pretty much made that impossible. It's unfortunate because I loved instant notification of e-mail via my phone. Now I've set up a procmail rule to allow mail from certain addresses to still be forwarded to sms. It's not ideal but it's better than spam.

[rudolph]

Heres how I fight spam sometimes...when I check my email and I'm bored, I look at my spam messages (amazingly I only get 2-4/day) and follow the link to the company trying to sell me their garbage. Then on thier site I go to their contact form or get thier email and use a temp email account of mine, and I send them the exact same message they sent me like 10 times. In some emails I include my own message such as "Annoying isn't it? Now you know how I feel". For example, earlier I recieved a message from http://rx-online-store.com telling me to buy some of thier drugs so I used thier contact form and sent them thier own email like 20 times ... if they wanna waste my time, I'll waste thiers

[TomB]

Isn't it sad when idiots can control your life? If our representatives would get off their butts and get bulk mailers to ID their crap with ADV - spam would dissapear overnight. Does anyone here think that there is actually a person on this planet who wouln't send all ADV flaged email directly to the trash?

[jizmo]

In the beginning of mobile phone technology, around -96 many finnish people got a raunchy SMS advertisement from sex lines. The company was fast tracked down and convicted so bad that I haven't seen anyone other trying for the last seven years.

That is, until this spring someone did this again from a foreign number. They are tracking now the guilty ones, hopefully they nail them too.

It's a great line of action against spamming they took, otherwise it would've propably gotten out of hand very soon. And yes, having spam pushed by force to your mobile phone with a loud alert sound .. that's about as annoying as spamming can get :evil:

/jizmo

[wiz]

I think it's necessary to make a distinction here between SMS and e-mail spam.

To some extent, on a PocketPC device it still is possible to protect oneself from having one's monthly GPRS quota "eaten up" by spam, and that's to limit header size to let's say 2kb. Retrieving email this way gives headers large enough to identify spam and to delete it prior to downloading the rest. Software manufacturers such as WebIS (Pocketinformant and @Mail) should work towards optimizing their programs and the way they retrieve and/or delete e-mail in such a way that spam impact is reduced to a level compared to the desktop. In all honesty I think spam is something very typical to the growth and development of Internet IN THE LAST decennium and the way people are using this medium nowadays, wireless or not. I am afraid it's just one of those unavoidable things that we will never succeed in banning completely. It's like the unsolicited folders and commercial prints that you receive in your traditional mailbox. Waste of paper, unnecessarily annoying and the stickers on your mailboxes saying you do not wish to receive this type of mail usually are only half-effective.

SMS spam, however, is a lot more difficult to avoid. As the owner of a cell phone number, whether on a cell phone or wireless device, you automatically become a defenceless victim to this type of abuse. There currently is no way yet to program your cell phone/pda in such a way that it filters or even bounces SMS messages. The risk here is even bigger now that for instance TV companies have found ways to abuse this system even more. Consider this. In the Netherlands the public was enabled to vote for their favourite artist during one of those talent hunt programs. To send in their vote by means of an SMS message would cost the viewer $0.70 per message. Ok, if you voluntarily choose to vote, you choose to accept the fact that you pay $0.70 per message. Outrageous, however, was the fact that every vote that was sent in via SMS automatically got an SMS response saying "thank you for voting" which, by the way, costed you another $0.70 to receive it.

Imagine you being a victim to spam where the spammer also finds a way to let you pay for the spam you receive .... For me, that would be the day to stop using a cellphone.

[thomas1973]

SMS spam, however, is a lot more difficult to avoid. As the owner of a cell phone number, whether on a cell phone or wireless device, you automatically become a defenceless victim to this type of abuse. There currently is no way yet to program your cell phone/pda in such a way that it filters or even bounces SMS messages.
Filtering SMS's would hve to be done at the phone networks server. I don't know any of any companies that provide this kind of service, probably because it's not a big problem - yet.
But filtering SMS's at the network server should be easy enough to set up if the need arises. It could also be used for filtering calls and SMS's while abroad, as phone companies charge ridiculous rates for reciving when you're out of country and on a foreign network.

Thomas.

[denivan]

In Belgium there's alot of commotion about rapidly increasing SMS spam. About a year ago I received my first spam message by SMS, and nowadays, alot of my friends are getting it too. Newsgroups are getting swamped with discussions about this malpractice...the worst of it all : alot of those SMS spam messages are send through reversed billing, so you pay about 1 USD for receiving spam !

[roberto_torres]

I can vouch for that - its very intrusive. I have received quite a few spam SMSs recently which is odd because not many people know my number...


SMS spammers generate thousand of numbers at random. Just like e-mail spammers do with addresses.

The law should do something and soon. Spammers shoud pay :evil:

[JvanEkris]

In Belgium there's alot of commotion about rapidly increasing SMS spam. About a year ago I received my first spam message by SMS, and nowadays, alot of my friends are getting it too. Newsgroups are getting swamped with discussions about this malpractice...the worst of it all : alot of those SMS spam messages are send through reversed billing, so you pay about 1 USD for receiving spam !

As i understood it, in the Netherlands Telephone companies have been ordered to block SPAM, since the reciever is paying for it. A lot of commotion has been raised but i think the new European Anti-SPAM laws will prove to be very effective...

Jaap

[roberto_torres]

By the way here are some tools I'm using to protect from e-mail spam.


1. Disposable e-mail addresses: Those create a disposable address that forwards mail to the real one. When you start receiving spam you can know who is sending it and you can just delete the disposable address. Two nice services are:

www.sneakemail.com
www.spammotel.com

2. Mail Washer. A free program for filtering mail.

www.mailwasher.net