SMS Spam is Down?

Cloudmark says, yes, SMS gift card spam is down, thanks to recent action taken by the Federal Trade Commission. Read more over on PC World. I’m very glad to see this. I ended up on the list of one of those spammers and they were driving me nuts. Thank goodness for Google Voice’s report spam functionality.
What can you do to stop SMS spam? If you use Google Voice, and the SMS messages are coming to your Google Voice number, just report it as spam inside of the GV interface. If it’s coming directly to your cell number, not via GV, then you can forward the message to 7726 (SPAM). It’s a clunky, multi-step process, however. And does it actually result in anything happening? Hard to say. I don’t yet have any proof that SMS spam reports to a provider are quick to result in blocking, as is the case with email spam. I suspect it still can’t hurt to report SMS spam, though. The more reports, the more likely a provider will be driven to take action.
 

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Phones part of SMS botnet

Spammers have been moving into the phone market for a long time. Just recently security firms have discovered an Android  botnet. This botnet sends viruses over SMS, and when a link in the SMS is clicked, the phone is infected with the virus which then sends more SMS.
The technology for blocking and reporting SMS spam is comparable to email blocking technology 10 or 12 years ago. There just aren’t many tools for people to use to control this spam. M3AAWG is addressing mobile spam, but it still seems that the volumes are increasing without much recourse. Even the 7726 reporting number doesn’t seem to stop the spam (nor remove per-text charges).
At least in the beginning of the email spam problem, we didn’t have botnets. Now, at the beginning of the curve for SMS spam, we already have self replicating botnets. I’m afraid the good guys might be behind on this issue.
Then again I might just be cranky because SMS spammers woke us up at 4:30 am.
Infoworld article
TNW article
PCWorld article

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Spamming the wrong person

Chris from Cloudmark tracks a UK text spammer.

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Oops? Path Texts Man's Entire Phonebook @ 6AM

(Hi! Al Iverson here. I’ll be guest blogging a bit while Laura and Steve are off dealing with stuff.)
Over on the BRANDED3 blog, Search Strategist Stephen Kenwright shares how social network Path sent text messages to everybody in his address book, very early in the morning on Tuesday, telling everyone that he had shared pictures with him on Path. Except, according to him, he hadn’t.
This even resulted in a number of odd, robotic voice phone calls to Stephen’s friends and family. Why? Because nowadays, when you send a text message to a landline, most phone companies convert it into a voice call. The phone rings, you answer it, and a robotic voice reads the text message to you. The functionality is a bit creepy, and I can imagine that it would scare the heck out of somebody’s grandparents.
Path is saying that basically the whole thing is user error, but I’m not sure that I’m convinced of that. Even if Kenneth somehow missed this option at install time, Path likely needs to make this feature much more clearly opt-in and ensure that users know what they’re getting into. Right or wrong, if it keeps happening, it’s going to lead to more negative press and perhaps even new scrutiny from the FTC. You don’t mess around with SMS permission.

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