If you thought spam
on your computer was a bother, brace yourself: spammers want to find you on your
cellphone.
Cellphones have become consumers’ most personal technological devices. Some
industry executives, along with consumer groups and security experts, are
concerned that unwanted text messages on phones will be an even greater headache
than unwanted computer messages.
Cellphone spam is particularly annoying to its recipients because it is more
invasive — announcing itself with a beep — and can be costly.
Taber Lightfoot, an assistant director for new media at the Yale School of
Management, is among those who have paid for the privilege of receiving
cellphone spam.
“I was at work and I got so annoyed,” she said of the first burst of three
messages she received. She got another burst two days later.
“That is when I called Verizon
and demanded they reimburse me $1.60 for eight text messages,” Ms. Lightfoot
said. “It wasn’t a lot of money, but it was my money.”
American consumers are expected to receive an estimated 1.5 billion
unsolicited text messages in 2008, according to Ferris Research, based in San
Francisco, which tracks mobile messaging trends. That is nearly double what they
received in 2006.
Of course that is a small percentage of the overall number of messages: an
industry survey showed that consumers in the United States sent and received
about 48 billion text messages in December alone. But for many people who are
charged as much as 20 cents for an incoming message or are interrupted in the
middle of dinner, even one is too many.
“The reason this really burns people up is because they have to pay for
messages they don’t want, and they shouldn’t have to,” said Chris Murray, senior
counsel for Consumers
Union, a nonprofit group.
Now some consumers, like Ms. Lightfoot, are monitoring their cellphones more
aggressively for unwanted messages and, in some cases, demanding refunds.
Computer security companies have developed products to help fight mobile spam.
And AT&T,
Verizon and others are making it easier for customers to block unsolicited
messages and keep spammers at bay.
The fees that customers pay to receive messages are a source of profit for
the phone companies. It is hard to estimate how much they make. Many consumers
pay for a monthly plan that allows them to send and receive large numbers of
messages. But for those without a plan, getting as few as 10 unsolicited text
messages a month at 20 cents each would cost an extra $24 a year.
Communications companies say they are not interested in spam as a profit
center. They want to one day exploit the power of customized advertising on
mobile phones, and tawdry spam pitches threaten to make their customers hostile
toward all commercial messages. The companies are trying to head off the problem
before consumers revolt.
The carriers regularly adjust spam filters to block offending messages. At Sprint,
more than 65 percent of all text messages sent over its network are identified
and blocked as spam before they reach customers.
The companies use legal weapons as well. Verizon said it had filed eight
lawsuits against spammers since 2004.
“Even if Verizon or AT&T are not the ones sending text messages to
customers, there is the perception that the operator is to blame,” said Seamus
McAteer, a senior analyst at M:Metrics, which tracks mobile phone advertising.
“It is not in the companies’ best interest to have customers calling and
complaining about their bills all the time.”
Ralph de la Vega, chief executive of AT&T’s wireless unit, said wireless
companies recently agreed to quickly share information about the sources of spam
to fight it more effectively.
Most phone spam is actually e-mail that comes through gateways linking the
Internet and cellphone networks, industry executives said.
Most wireless phones have a dedicated e-mail address. At AT&T, for
example, it is a customer’s cellphone number followed by @text.att.net.
Using computers, spammers create millions of possible number combinations, then
send messages to those addresses.
One day in March, Anthony Melone, Verizon Wireless’s chief technology
officer, began getting complaints from customers in the Northeast and Midwest
about a wave of unsolicited text messages that were flooding its network. Mr.
Melone said Verizon technicians tracked down the source and found the messages
were coming from someone using e-mail accounts at Microsoft’s
Internet portal, msn.com.
It took a day to quell the assault because the spammers kept changing their
e-mail addresses and the Web sites they were promoting. By then, nearly five
million messages had made it past the network’s anti-spam filters, resulting in
grumbling and demands for refunds from customers like Ms. Lightfoot.
“Even when you find them, spammers know how to keep it below the radar,” Mr.
Melone said.
Christopher Siracusa, a 24-year-old medical student in Brooklyn, said he gets
about one or two spam messages a week, usually from pornographic sites with
come-ons like, “Hey Sweetie, we talked last night.” As a result, he disregards
any text message from a number not programmed into his cellphone.
This, though, has caused miscommunication more than once with people he
actually wanted to reach. Recently, he said, he got a text message from a female
friend who wrote, “I have a new number, call me.” Mr. Siracusa did not, thinking
the message was spam, and he later had to explain the problem to her.
But inconvenience is not the only downside; there is also the threat of
viruses as phones become more like personal computers. Some companies are
already preparing for this.
Last winter, Symantec,
a maker of security software, introduced a product for smartphones that connect
with the Internet to detect mobile threats, check for viruses and automatically
delete spam or corral suspect texts in a folder.
Khoi Nguyen, a product manager for mobile security at Symantec, said the
company developed the software mainly for Asia and Europe, where creative
spammers try to steal credit card information or banking data through phones. He
said he expected to see the same trend here in the next 6 to 12 months.
“There has been a transition from annoying spam to threatening spam,” he
said.
Michael Zaruba, an AT&T customer who works in Chicago as an editor and
producer, recently received unsolicited texts from “Rose,” asking him to visit a
Web site. He said he did not visit the site, but it made him question whether
his 12-year-old brother, who just got a new cellphone, would.
“Nowadays phones come equipped with access to the Internet,” Mr. Zaruba said.
“It’s another way to mess with your computer. I can see people getting viruses
on their phones.”
All major communications companies give consumers the ability to thwart spam
by changing the easily guessed e-mail addresses for their phones, or completely
blocking messages coming from the Internet. They can do this by logging onto the
company’s Web site and changing their preferences.
“I did that six months ago and I have not received any spam,” Mr. Melone of
Verizon said. “No one, not even me, wants their cellphone to ring at 2 in the
morning.”
Even if, like me, you don’t much care about David Cook, you have to
hand it to the hit FOX reality series: It’s putting SMS systems to maximum use,
turning them into a giant cash machine. AT&T says the most recent season of
“American Idol” show generated 78 million text messages — up from 67 million
last season. And an informal poll conducted by the company on its web site
reveals that 51 percent of the 416 respondents tended to text more frequently
during the “American Idol” season than other times of the year. Another
twenty-two percent said they first learned to text message by voting for their
favorite “Idol” contestant. Now only if Ma Bell could tell us how much money
they are really raking from this tie-up with the talent-based reality show.
In a 
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