Mobile phone spam

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Spam on the display screen of a Vietnamese mobile phone. Mobile phone spam Vi.jpg
Spam on the display screen of a Vietnamese mobile phone.

Mobile phone spam is a form of spam (unsolicited messages, especially advertising), directed at the text messaging or other communications services of mobile phones or smartphones. As the popularity of mobile phones surged in the early 2000s, frequent users of text messaging began to see an increase in the number of unsolicited (and generally unwanted) commercial advertisements being sent to their telephones through text messaging. This can be particularly annoying for the recipient because, unlike in email, some recipients may be charged a fee for every message received, including spam. Mobile phone spam is generally less pervasive than email spam, where in 2010 around 90% of email is spam. The amount of mobile spam varies widely from region to region. In North America, mobile spam steadily increased after 2008 and accounted for half of all mobile phone traffic by 2019. [1] In parts of Asia up to 30% of messages were spam in 2012.

Contents

The lesser and geographically uneven prevalence of mobile phone spam is attributable to geographic variation of prevalence of mobile vs non-mobile electronic communications, the higher cost (to spammers) of and technological barriers to sending mobile messages in some areas, and to law enforcement in others. Today, particularly in North America, most mobile phone spam is sent from mobile devices that have prepaid unlimited messaging rate plans. While the rate plans allow for unlimited messaging, in reality the relatively slow sending rate (on the order of magnitude of 1/s) limits the number of messages that may be sent before an abusing mobile is shut down.

Terminology

Mobile phone spam is described as "mobile spamming", "SMS spam", "text spam", "m-spam" or "mspam". SMiShing involves tricking users into revealing confidential information and is a type of phishing through mobile phone spam. [2]

Criminality and law enforcement

SMS spam is illegal under common law in many jurisdictions as trespass to chattels. [3] Jurisdictions with specific SMS spam regulation and fines include Australia, [4] the EU, and the United States. In the US, violators face substantial costs. [5] For example, in a 2008 settlement, the violator agreed to pay $150 to each spam recipient. [6] In a 2010 class action settlement of Satterfield v. Simon & Schuster, a case that reached the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, defendants agreed to pay $175 to each spam recipient. In subsequent cases, the payment per class member has increased to $200 in 2011 and $500 in 2013. [7] [8] In response to Satterfield, entities who make money sending mobile phone spam formed the Mobile Advocacy Coalition (MAC) to lobby the government to legalize that activity. [9] In the US, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has expanded Phone Spam regulations to cover also Voice Spam—mostly in form of prerecorded telemarketing calls—commonly known as robocalls; [10] victims can file a complaint with the FCC. [11] In California, Section 17538.41 of the B&P Code bans text message advertisement. [12] Consumers can sue on an individual or class basis per a private right of action against unfair business practices. [13] In 2019, senators John Thune, Roger Wicker and Ed Markey introduced a new proposal titled the Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence Act (TRACED) to deter criminal robocall violations and improve enforcement [14] which passed the Senate on May 22, 2019 [15] and was signed into law by President Trump in December 2019. [16]

Enforcement in small claims court

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) released an order in Aug, 2004 that reiterated that SMS spam messages to cellphones are illegal under the existing Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). Each such unsolicited message received without permission entitles the recipient to take the sender to small claims court and collect a minimum of $1 for each violation. They said this in 2003, and reiterated it in 2004: "In 2003, we released a Report and Order in which we reaffirmed that the TCPA prohibits any call using an automatic telephone dialing system or an artificial or prerecorded message to any wireless telephone number. We concluded that this encompasses both voice calls and text calls, including Short Message Service (SMS) text messaging calls, to wireless phone numbers." [17]

The 2003 TCPA Order (18 FCC Rcd at 14115, para. 165) says: “Both the statute and our rules prohibit these calls, with limited exceptions, ‘to any telephone number assigned to a paging service, cellular telephone service, specialized mobile radio service, or other common carrier service, or any service for which the called party is charged.’ This encompasses both voice calls and text calls to wireless numbers including, for example, short message service (SMS) calls, provided the call is made to a telephone number assigned to such service.” (citations omitted).

In the UK, Sending unsolicited text messages is acting contrary to Schedule 2 of the Data Protection Act 1998 and section 22 of the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003. Section 13 of Data Protection Act 1998 and section 30 of Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 enable consumers to bring proceedings for compensation [18] for spam emails or text messages.

Legalization

In 2013, Club Texting, Inc. petitioned the FCC for a Declaratory Ruling that Text Broadcasters Are Not Senders of Text Messages, and had a private meeting with five FCC staff members to argue their case. [19] This would mean that text broadcasters would no longer be liable for mobile phone spam they conveyed. [20]

Factors complicating SMS spam reduction

Fighting SMS spam is complicated by several factors, including the lower rate of SMS spam (compared to more abused services such as Internet email), which has allowed many users and service providers to ignore the issue, and the limited availability of mobile phone spam-filtering software. Filtering SMS spam at the recipient device would be an imperfect solution in markets where users are charged to receive messages, as the user may still be charged for the message once the provider sent it, even if software on the device blocked it from appearing on the device's display. This problem is not present in most of the world outside the U.S., however, where users are not charged to receive messages.

Providers may fear liability should a legitimate message of an emergency nature be blocked. Nonetheless, many providers voluntarily provide their subscribers technical means for mitigating unsolicited SMS messages. [21]

Defense

There are several actions and strategies that can help reduce SMS spam. Legal actions can be effective and remunerative. Many carriers (such as AT&T, [22] T-Mobile, [23] Verizon and Sprint in the US; and EE, T-Mobile, Orange and O2 in the UK) allow subscribers to report spam by forwarding the spam messages to short code 7726 (spells SPAM on a traditional phone keypad) (33700 in France, 1909 in India), other UK carriers Vodafone and Three use 87726 and 37726 respectively. It is reported that 1/2 million spam reports in France resulted in the disconnection of 300 spammers, and many more cease-and-desist orders were sent. [24] Some spam defense measures depend on detection, and there are two developments in that area: a GSMA pilot spam reporting program, and the development of Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) standards for mobile spam reporting. In February 2010, [25] the GSM Association has announced a pilot program that will allow subscribers to report SMS spam by forwarding it to short code '7726' which spells "SPAM" on most phones. AT&T Mobility, Korea Telecom, and SFR announced their participation. Following the pilot, a number of other mobile operators have joined the GSMA's Spam Reporting Service program.

The Open Mobile Alliance completed its "SpamRep" [26] standard which provides a standardized client-server interface suited for user reporting of mobile email, SMS, MMS and IM spam using a 'This-Is-Spam' button or menu item, as users of wired email systems are now doing. In 2012, responding to the increase in SMS spam, the GSM Association formed a Messaging Security Group to help reduce the impact of mobile spam. Another helpful SMS spam-reduction technique is guarding one's cell phone number. One of the biggest sources of SMS spam is number harvesting carried out by Internet sites offering "free" ring tone downloads. In order to facilitate the downloads, users must provide their phones' numbers; which in turn are used to send frequent advertising messages to the phone. Wording in the sites' Terms of Service intended to make this legal have not survived court challenge.[ citation needed ]

Another approach to reducing SMS spam that is offered by some carriers involves creating an alias address rather than using the cell phone's number as a text message address. Only messages sent to the alias are delivered; messages sent to the phone's number are discarded. A New York Times article provided detailed information on this in 2008. [27] Another countermeasure is to use a service that provides a public phone number and publishes the SMS messages received at that number to a publicly accessible website. [28] Google Voice can be used in this way, but with numbers and messages kept private. most cell phone providers offer the option of completely disabling all text messaging services on a user's account. This extreme solution, however, is satisfactory only for those users who have neither the need nor the desire to utilize SMS at all.

In June 2009, three major Chinese carriers—China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom—imposed limits on text messaging in order to crack down on spam SMS. Under the restrictions, a phone number can send no more than 200 messages per hour and 1000/day on weekdays. [29] In the United States, recipients of SMS spam can file a complaint with the FCC using form 1088G. [30] Phone users in the United Kingdom can use the Information Commissioner's complaints page and can take action against the sender through the small claims court. The ICO however only have powers to act against SMS spam originating in the UK, and in the event Spam originates outside their jurisdiction they will forward details to an equivalent local regulator if one exists.

Pro-active campaigns

In October 2014, a network of solicitors in the UK called PIE (Personal Injury Expert) Lawyers launched a campaign on social media to rid their industry of text message spam. Their feeling was that the use of unsolicited sms marketing was adding further damage to their industry's already poor reputation. The campaign focused on the fact that, under UK law, it is illegal for a solicitor to obtain business by unsolicited direct contact with potential personal injury clients. This is the case even in the event that it is not the solicitor who makes the unsolicited approach. The campaign actively encouraged people to respond to the spam text messages. Upon receipt of an offer of legal representation from a solicitor, the person would then report the solicitor to the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) which would then take appropriate action. Ultimately any solicitor found to be guilty on repeated occasions of obtaining customers by unsolicited approaches could have their practicing certificates revoked thereby ending their career as a solicitor.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SMS</span> Text messaging service component

Short Message/Messaging Service, commonly abbreviated as SMS, is a text messaging service component of most telephone, Internet and mobile device systems. It uses standardized communication protocols that let mobile devices exchange short text messages. An intermediary service can facilitate a text-to-voice conversion to be sent to landlines.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Spamming</span> Unsolicited electronic messages, especially advertisements

Spamming is the use of messaging systems to send multiple unsolicited messages (spam) to large numbers of recipients for the purpose of commercial advertising, for the purpose of non-commercial proselytizing, for any prohibited purpose, or simply repeatedly sending the same message to the same user. While the most widely recognized form of spam is email spam, the term is applied to similar abuses in other media: instant messaging spam, Usenet newsgroup spam, Web search engine spam, spam in blogs, wiki spam, online classified ads spam, mobile phone messaging spam, Internet forum spam, junk fax transmissions, social spam, spam mobile apps, television advertising and file sharing spam. It is named after Spam, a luncheon meat, by way of a Monty Python sketch about a restaurant that has Spam in almost every dish in which Vikings annoyingly sing "Spam" repeatedly.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Telemarketing</span> Method of direct marketing

Telemarketing is a method of direct marketing in which a salesperson solicits prospective customers to buy products, subscriptions or services, either over the phone or through a subsequent face to face or web conferencing appointment scheduled during the call. Telemarketing can also include recorded sales pitches programmed to be played over the phone via automatic dialing.

Caller identification is a telephone service, available in analog and digital telephone systems, including voice over IP (VoIP), that transmits a caller's telephone number to the called party's telephone equipment when the call is being set up. The caller ID service may include the transmission of a name associated with the calling telephone number, in a service called Calling Name Presentation (CNAM). The service was first defined in 1993 in International Telecommunication Union – Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) Recommendation Q.731.3.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Text messaging</span> Act of typing and sending a brief, digital message

Text messaging, or texting, is the act of composing and sending electronic messages, typically consisting of alphabetic and numeric characters, between two or more users of mobile devices, desktops/laptops, or another type of compatible computer. Text messages may be sent over a cellular network or may also be sent via satellite or Internet connection.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Direct marketing</span> Model of communicating discounts and other sales offers

Direct marketing is a form of communicating an offer, where organizations communicate directly to a pre-selected customer and supply a method for a direct response. Among practitioners, it is also known as direct response marketing. In contrast to direct marketing, advertising is more of a mass-message nature.

Junk faxes are a form of telemarketing where unsolicited advertisements are sent via fax transmission. Junk faxes are the faxed equivalent of spam or junk mail. Proponents of this advertising medium often use the terms broadcast fax or fax advertising to avoid the negative connotation of the term junk fax. Junk faxes are generally considered to be a nuisance since they waste toner, ink and paper in fax machines.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991</span> U.S. federal law

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (TCPA) was passed by the United States Congress in 1991 and signed into law by President George H. W. Bush as Public Law 102-243. It amended the Communications Act of 1934. The TCPA is codified as 47 U.S.C. § 227. The TCPA restricts telephone solicitations and the use of automated telephone equipment. The TCPA limits companies or debt collectors from calling clients or prospective customers using automatic dialing systems, artificial or prerecorded voice messages, SMS text messages, and fax machines. It also specifies several technical requirements for fax machines, autodialers, and voice messaging systems—principally with provisions requiring identification and contact information of the entity using the device to be contained in the message.

Email marketing is the act of sending a commercial message, typically to a group of people, using email. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing. It involves using email to send advertisements, request business, or solicit sales or donations. Email marketing strategies commonly seek to achieve one or more of three primary objectives: build loyalty, trust, or brand awareness. The term usually refers to sending email messages with the purpose of enhancing a merchant's relationship with current or previous customers, encouraging customer loyalty and repeat business, acquiring new customers or convincing current customers to purchase something immediately, and sharing third-party ads.

The Junk Fax Prevention Act (JFPA) of 2005, Pub. L.Tooltip Public Law (United States) 109–21 (text)(PDF), 119 Stat. 359 (2005), was passed by the United States Congress and signed into law by President George W. Bush on July 9, 2005. The law amends the Communications Act of 1934, significantly altering some aspects of prior amendments made by the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 and the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 as they relate to the issue of junk fax.

Mobile marketing is a multi-channel online marketing technique focused at reaching a specific audience on their smartphones, feature phones, tablets, or any other related devices through websites, e-mail, SMS and MMS, social media, or mobile applications. Mobile marketing can provide customers with time and location sensitive, personalized information that promotes goods, services, appointment reminders and ideas. In a more theoretical manner, academic Andreas Kaplan defines mobile marketing as "any marketing activity conducted through a ubiquitous network to which consumers are constantly connected using a personal mobile device".

An SMS gateway or MMS gateway allows a computer to send or receive text messages in the form of Short Message Service (SMS) or Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) transmissions between local and/or international telecommunications networks. In most cases, SMS and MMS are eventually routed to a mobile phone through a wireless carrier. SMS gateways are commonly used as a method for person-to-person to device-to-person communications. Many SMS gateways support content and media conversions from email, push, voice, and other formats.

A robocall is a phone call that uses a computerized autodialer to deliver a pre-recorded message, as if from a robot. Robocalls are often associated with political and telemarketing phone campaigns, but can also be used for public service, emergency announcements, or scammers. Multiple businesses and telemarketing companies use auto-dialing software to deliver prerecorded messages to millions of users. Some robocalls use personalized audio messages to simulate an actual personal phone call. The service is also viewed as prone to association with scams.

Mobile advertising is a form of advertising via mobile (wireless) phones or other mobile devices. It is a subset of mobile marketing, mobile advertising can take place as text ads via SMS, or banner advertisements that appear embedded in a mobile web site.

YouMail is an Irvine, CA-based developer of a visual voicemail and Robocall blocking service for mobile phones, available in the US and the UK. Their voicemail mobile app replaces the voicemail service offered by mobile phone service providers, and offers webmail-like voicemail access and voicemail-to-text transcriptions. The company also compiles the YouMail Robocall index by monitoring automated call patterns and behaviors, and verifying that activity against numbers that its customers block, or report as spam.

Call blocking, also known as call block, call screening, or call rejection, allows a telephone subscriber to block incoming calls from specific telephone numbers. This feature may require an additional payment to the subscriber's telephone company or a third-party.

Ringless voicemail, also called a voicemail drop, is a method in which a pre-recorded audio message is placed in a voicemail inbox without the associated telephone ringing first.

STIR/SHAKEN, or SHAKEN/STIR, is a suite of protocols and procedures intended to combat caller ID spoofing on public telephone networks. Caller ID spoofing is used by robocallers to mask their identity or to make it appear the call is from a legitimate source, often a nearby phone number with the same area code and exchange, or from well-known agencies like the Internal Revenue Service or Ontario Provincial Police. This sort of spoofing is common for calls originating from voice-over-IP (VoIP) systems, which can be located anywhere in the world.

Barr v. American Assn. of Political Consultants, Inc., 591 U.S. ___ (2020), was a United States Supreme Court case involving the use of robocalls made to cell phones, a practice that had been banned by the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (TCPA), but which exemptions had been made by a 2015 amendment for government debt collection. The case was brought by the American Association of Political Consultants, an industry trade group, and others that desired to use robocalls to make political ads, challenging the exemption unconstitutionally favored debt collection speech over political speech. The Supreme Court, in a complex plurality decision, ruled on July 6, 2020, that the 2015 amendment to the TCPA did unconstitutionally favor debt collection speech over political speech and violated the First Amendment.

Facebook, Inc. v. Duguid, 592 U.S. 395 (2021), was a United States Supreme Court case related to the definition and function of auto dialers under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (TCPA) to send unsolicited text messages. In a unanimous decision based on statutory interpretation of the TCPA, the Supreme Court ruled that auto dialers are defined by their function to either store or produce telephone numbers from a random or sequential number generator.

References

  1. ↑ Hamza Shaban, "Nearly half of cellphone calls will be scams by 2019, report says", "The Washington Post", September 19, 2019
  2. ↑ Zainal, Kamahazira; Jali, Mohd Zalisham (2016). Berry, Michael W.; Hj. Mohamed, Azlinah; Yap, Bee Wah (eds.). "A Review of Feature Extraction Optimization in SMS Spam Messages Classification". Soft Computing in Data Science. Communications in Computer and Information Science. Singapore: Springer: 158–170. doi:10.1007/978-981-10-2777-2_14. ISBN   978-981-10-2777-2.
  3. ↑ Compuserve v Cyberpromo
  4. ↑ "... mBlox has paid a penalty of A$11,000". 2008-10-30. Retrieved 2010-11-20.
  5. ↑ Leyden, John (2008-09-23). "Timberland pays $7m to settle SMS spam lawsuit". The Register. Retrieved 2010-11-20.
  6. ↑ $150 Per Text Paid to Timberland Text Getters from Lawsuit (2008-09-23). "($150 Per Text Paid to Timberland Text Getters from Lawsuit)" . Retrieved 2010-11-20.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  7. ↑ Lozano v. Twentieth Century Fox (N.D. Ill. 2011)
  8. ↑ Pimental v. Google (N.D. Cal 2011; Case No. 11-cv-02585-YGR)
  9. ↑ https://digital.lib.washington.edu/dspace-law/handle/1773.1/450 Mobile Marketing Derailed, pg. 42 (PDF pg. 10)
  10. ↑ "New Rule Prohibiting Unwanted Robocalls". Federal Trade Commission. 2009-08-28. Retrieved 2010-11-20.
  11. ↑ "FCC Consumer Complaints". Federal Communications Commission. Retrieved 2010-11-20.
  12. ↑ "WAIS Document Retrieval". Archived from the original on 2016-11-29. Retrieved 2010-11-20.
  13. ↑ "Mobile SMS Spam Banned in California". Archived from the original on 2016-11-08. Retrieved 2010-11-20.
  14. ↑ "S.151 - TRACED Act", "Congress.Gov"
  15. ↑ Emily "Senate Passes Anti-Robocall Bill", "The Hill", May 23, 2019
  16. ↑ Condon, Stephanie. "Trump signs the TRACED Act, the first federal anti-robocall law". ZDNet. Retrieved January 2, 2020.
  17. ↑ "Slashdot | SMS Cellphone Spam Declared Illegal". slashdot.org. 2004-08-13. Retrieved 2010-11-20.
  18. ↑ "Sending unsolicited text messages". Archived from the original on 2015-12-08.
  19. ↑ "ECFS".
  20. ↑ "Disco text settlement - Great Words For Better Life". Disco text settlement. Retrieved 24 April 2018.
  21. ↑ page 23
  22. ↑ "What YOU can do to control cell phone spam" (PDF). AT&T Consumer Guide. Retrieved 8 December 2012.
  23. ↑ "Text Message (SMS) Spam Reporting". T-Mobile Support Community. Retrieved 8 December 2012.
  24. ↑ "GSMA Launches SMS Spam Reporting Service - PCWorld Business Center". PC World . Retrieved 13 January 2011.
  25. ↑ "GSMA to Address Spam and Fraudulent Messaging Threats for Consumers ~ GSM World". 2010-03-24. Archived from the original on 2014-08-09. Retrieved 2014-07-28.
  26. ↑ "Mobile Spam Reporting Technical Specification". Open Mobile Alliance. Retrieved 2012-06-19.
  27. ↑ Pogue, David (2008-06-12). "How to Block Cellphone Spam". The New York Times. Retrieved January 13, 2011.
  28. ↑ "JunkSMS.com - Temporary SMS Inbox" . Retrieved January 15, 2011.
  29. ↑ Le, Yu (2009-06-12). "China take steps to deal with SMS spam messages". Reuters. Retrieved 2009-06-14.
  30. ↑ "Form 1088G : Wireless Communications Device" . Retrieved 8 December 2012.
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