Cell-Phone SPAM

If you thought your spam problems couldn't get any worse, check your mobile phone. Cell phones are becoming the latest target of electronic junk mail, with a growing number of marketers using text messages to target subscribers. Cell phones know where they are. So you can get a CD purchase offer when you approach the local CD multistore and so on... Also there are spam messages that request you to forward them to 10 people in order to save the life of a little girl (just like e-mails). It can become very annoying. Don't forget that the same thing made the e-mail providers to start thinking of charging for e-mails in order to fight it! (story)

In Japan, where text messaging is more popular than talking on cell phones, wireless spam was a huge problem a few years ago. NTT DoCoMo Inc., Japan's largest cell-phone provider, said spam text messages overloaded its systems at times in 2000 and 2001, freezing some customers' screens and spreading programs that caused some phones to automatically dial Japan's equivalent of 911. The company eventually brought the problem under control by installing security and spam-filtering software on its network and in its phones. But do the companies really want it to stop? Don't forget that the increased circulation of SMS means revenues for them too! I hope yes. After all, considering the expansion of Bluetooth technology, soon we will be bombed with junk sms from every shop we walk by, at no cost for them, only for us.

Kill SMS Spam Where It Starts. Last month, the European Union enacted new digital privacy rules that require companies to obtain consent before they send e-mail and SMS text messages to mobile phones. Each of the EU's 15 members and 10 countries joining in May will set its own penalties. In Britain, Vodafone launched a trial service to allow its users to report when they get an unsolicited text message. If they get one, they can forward it, at no cost, to Vodafone. The company, in turn, will forward it to Britain's Standards of Telephone Information Services.