In-box invaders
Posted on Thursday, May 15, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Style/225795/
There was an extra 50 cents in charges on my latest wireless telephone bill.
Forty cents of it was for two text messages sent to my cell phone; the remaining 10 cents were for various local, state and federal taxes on the first 40 cents.
The messages came from a sender I didn’t know, apparently trying to lure me into checking out a Web site I didn’t want to visit.
I am the victim of phone spam.
Long a plague of e-mail in-boxes, unsolicited spam messages are now taking the next step, directly to your cell phone.
E-mail spam, at least, can be deleted with the click of a mouse. And it doesn’t cost you anything, at least not in cash. (Well, maybe if you send your personal data to people claiming you’ve won the Nigerian lottery, or open an e-mail, accidentally download a virus and have to rebuild your hard drive. )
But text-message spam can cost you real money. Text messages cost receivers between 10 and 25 cents apiece. That’s unless you have one of those plans with unlimited text messaging. Now 50 cents, in the ultimate scheme of things, isn’t that big a dent in my budget. The bigger sting is the invasion of privacy and the accompanying sense of violation.
GROWING PROBLEM For most people, and at least for the moment, cell-phone spam isn’t a big problem. The average cell-phone user, says Consumer Reports (Consumer Reports. org ), receives only a few unsolicited text messages per year. Wireless carriers have spam filters and allow their customers to block messages from certain numbers. In general, they will also remove charges for unwanted messages. (Sprint deducted all 50 cents from my bill. ) Hugh McCartney, of Cloudmark, a San Francisco-based company that creates anti-spam software for carriers, told ABC News (www. abc. go. com ) that more is on the way.
He says about 5 percent of the text messages in the United States are spam. But spammers have learned to generate thousands of numbers in seconds. “Mobile spam is going to quadruple in the next year,” he predicts.
And the increasing number of “smart” phones such as BlackBerrys with e-mail capability is only going to increase the number of numbers to send spam.
Technology journalist Mike Elgan, in a commentary at InternetNews. com (www. internetnews. com ), notes, “There will be more than 4 billion cell phones to target by the end of the year. Yet cell-phone advertising represents just about 1 percent of the total money spent on advertising. EMarketer projects that the $ 421 million spent on cellphone ads in the United States in 2006 will grow to $ 4. 7 billion by 2011 and exceed $ 6. 5 billion in 2012.
“ Cell-phone spam is a ‘perfect storm’ of annoying attributes. It audibly interrupts your life like telemarketing. It’s cheap to mass-produce like e-mail spam. And it holds you hostage like TV ads.
“ Like lambs to slaughter, the cellphone-using community (i. e., everybody ) has no idea what’s coming,” Elgan predicts.
AGAINST THE LAW Most cell-phone spam is not only intrusive, it’s illegal. Since 2005, the so-called federal CAN-SPAM Act — Controlling the Assault on Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing — has prohibited the sending of commercial e-mail and text messages to cell phones without express prior authorization. Typically, that means if you want to receive promotional material or updates, you must send a text message to a short numerical code to opt in. But that doesn’t stop spammers from sending you messages asking you to download ring tones, visit questionable sites over your phone’s Internet connection or urging you to subscribe to horoscopes or sports-score updates.
Most people who get these messages, says Janet Robb, president and chief executive officer of the Arkansas Better Business Bureau, signed up for them, maybe without meaning to — they used their cell phones to enter a contest or a sweepstakes or registered the number through an online shopping site, and got onto a list.
Among the available services: You can have travel site Orbitz. com or your airline send you flight status updates via text message. American Idol and other TV shows ask viewers to vote or take polls via text message. You can download ring tones and “wallpaper” — the image on your phone screen — by text message.
However, Robb urges you to always read and understand the privacy policy before you click on “I agree.”
“That fine print is fine for a reason,” she says. “It’s to discourage you from reading it.”
Worse, many who enter that contest or download a supposedly “free” ring tone find themselves being billed for unwanted access charges or cell-phone services.
If that happens, Robb recommends, go back to your wireless provider to remove the items from your bill, which federal rules require it to do. The provider usually then notifies the third party, which might re-bill you itself. More commonly, however, Robb says, they give up.
FILTERS AND SUITS Because unwanted text messages cost their customers money, which makes for unhappy customers, it’s good business sense for wireless providers to try to keep spam off their phones. “We do work hard to keep it at an absolute minimum,” says AT&T spokesman Natasha Collins. “For many people, their wireless phone is a very personal thing, attached at the hip, and we don’t want them to be bothered.” At AT&T, that means using effective spam filters and “other methods” to prevent spam from getting through. The company has taken legal action against more pernicious spammers, she says. The individual customer, she says, should be careful where he disseminates his number. And if something does get through, she recommends calling customer service, which will decide on a case-by-case basis about issuing a credit or taking the cost off the bill.
Collins notes that the company guards its customers’ numbers, but wouldn’t comment on how spammers might get access.
The guesswork involved in targeting cell-phone numbers is easier than randomly selecting e-mail addresses, notes the Washington Post: “While an e-mail address has a unique sequence of characters and a variable length, phone numbers are 10 digits. Therefore, it is easier to blitz thousands of potential customers at once.”
And a clever spammer might figure out, say, that certain threedigit prefixes are the property of certain cell-phone companies and use that information to their advantage and customers’ disadvantage. “I don’t know how they function,” Collins says.
SMASHING ‘SMISHING’ According to the Post, Verizon Wireless says it blocks more than 200 million spam text messages every month. Worse than just the mere presence of spam, there are more malicious messages that can lead to a new form of fraud called “smishing,” a variation of a spam e-mail attack known as “phishing.” The name also results because text messaging is also known as SMS (short message service ). Spammers disguise them as legitimate inquiries from e-commerce or financial sites such as eBay, PayPal or banks and seek to dupe consumers into giving up account numbers or passwords. Don’t fall for it — reputable financial institutions don’t ask for account details via cell phone.
MAKING IT STOP
Consumer Reports magazine has a few ideas to minimize the chances of getting unwelcome text messages: Act fast. “Call your carrier as soon as you receive a spam message. While no hard-and-fast rules govern the removal of unsolicited text-message charges, you may have more luck having a handful of charges waived than waiting until, say, several dozen have accumulated.” Block cell spam at the source. “Virtually all spam messages come over the Internet via a SMSC (Short Message Service Center ) or e-mail gateway, often from overseas. Go to your cell account online and access your e-mail and messaging preferences. Then activate the setting that blocks messages over the Internet.
“ You needn’t block all messages; some carriers like Verizon allow you to designate certain addresses from which you don’t want to receive texts. That way you can still receive ‘good’ messages from your bank, airline and other vendors with whom you have relationships. You can also ask the customer service rep for help accessing your account.” Don’t invite more spam. “Free or inexpensive ring tones and games from third-party vendors may be tempting. But each such download may unwittingly put you at risk of spam messages or other headaches, such as fraudulent charges and identity theft,” Consumer Reports says. Register your cell number with the National Do Not Call Registry — (888 ) 382-1222 or online at www. donotcall. gov — the same way you may already have registered your land line.
However, according to the Federal Trade Commission, which administers the registry, it exists mainly to stop telemarketers, not spammers.
And, Robb says, that’s a technicality anyway. “Only the people willing to abide by it look at it anyway,” she says.
If you continue to receive calls, you can file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission via the Do Not Call Web site; tell your cell-phone carrier so it’s aware of the problem; and file a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission as well.
The FCC also recommends that you: Distribute your wireless number sparingly. Don’t display your number or e-mail address in public. That includes online newsgroups, chat rooms, Web sites or membership directories. If you open an unwanted message, send a stop or opt out message in response. Check the privacy policy when submitting your wireless phone number or e-mail address to any Web site. Find out if the policy allows the company to sell your information.
The bottom line: As with your computer, never download to your phone anything from a source you don’t know and trust.