FCC Bans Mobile Spam, And Now Some Bad News

[Kris Kumar]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.thefeature.com/article?articleid=100950' target='_blank'>http://www.thefeature.com/article?articleid=100950</a><br /><br /></div><i>"The details aren't quite as interesting, unfortunately. While most of the mobile phone-carrying world thinks "SMS text messages" when they hear mobile spam, the FCC ruling only applies to email messages to a mobile phone. This seems especially odd. First, why should the device the email message is received on make any difference? Lots of people check their email on their phones, and if the email is banned when they receive it on their desktop, why should be the law be different when they access the same message on their mobile phones? The answer is because they're not even talking about your regular email that you forward to a mobile phone -- but only email spam that is sent directly to a special email address for that phone as given by the carrier."</i><br /><br />What was the FCC thinking? Does anyone in the FCC own a cellphone? OK, banning mails to <i>[email protected]</i> is a good step which protects the customers from <i>some</i> mobile spam. But not including SMS messages in the ruling, leaves a big gaping hole, which will be exploited by the spammers. In my home country India, the carriers themselves spam the cellphones with promotions and announcements. You hear the phone beep to indicate that an SMS message has arrived and you pick up the phone only to find that it is a junk SMS. :evil: It gets really annoying when it happens many times in a day. Because unlike the desktop spam, the cellphone is always traveling with you. So you are getting disturbed in <i>real-time</i>. Luckily the incoming SMS messages are free over there (another reason why SMS spam is common). Cellphone revolution started late in the US and the SMS messaging is beginning to gain popularity among the masses. I am sure it won't be long before the spammers catch up with the mobile revolution and start spamming the cellphones with SMS messages. What will make it worse in the US is that SMS messages are not free. What are your thoughts on the FCC ruling? Is it really a good news?

[John Cody]

I am starting to get 6-10 Spam SMS messages a day. And since I get charged $0.02 per message I receive, this now costs me $3.60 per month.

Verizon's SMS system (vtext.com) allows SMS messages to be sent to your cellphone's number ([email protected]) or to an alias that you can setup ([email protected]).

I have asked Verizon repeated times to setup an option that would block emails/SMS sent to the [email protected], but yet allow SMS/emails to be sent to my device using the [email protected]. This way, if my alias ever gets compromised (getting too much spam to it), I can simply create a new alias - because changing my cell phone number is not practical to change everytime I get too much spam.

But, being the big corporate red-tape company that Verizon is, they probably won't implement my idea, even though it would be very easy to do so....afterall they will just make more money by NOT stopping spam being delivered to it's customer devices :(

[Kris Kumar]

Your scenario is covered under the new FCC ruling. So this is good news for you.

But I know that the FCC ruling does not mean that the spam will stop overnight. And don't know the effort that has to be carried out on your part to stop it. I would suggest mailing the link to FCC's ruling to Verizon and asking them to take some serious action.

[Kris Kumar]

But, being the big corporate red-tape company that Verizon is, they probably won't implement my idea, even though it would be very easy to do so....afterall they will just make more money by NOT stopping spam being delivered to it's customer devices :(

I feel that because of the FCC ruling Verizon will HAVE TO protect the interests of their customers. More so because the unsolicited SMS messages are being charged on your bill.