In excess of 1 billion text message are sent in the U.S. every day. This figure is expected to rise in the near future, which also means that the issue of text message spam will rise in prevalence.
Currently, according to San Francisco-based Cloudmark, about 5% of text messages sent in the U.S. are spam-related. This is relatively small, especially when compared to other countries like India and China, where the percentage of spam-related text messages can be upwards of 30 and 50%, respectively.
Still, there is a growing sentiment of irritation and frustration. Text message spam is a vastly different beast to deal with than its email counterpart. While email spam has spawned the rise of complex inbox filters, text message spam is having an easier time slipping past filters. Email spam that slips through to an inbox can be easily deleted, but text message spam often costs the recipient money to view before ascertaining its illegitimacy.
Verizon Wireless claims that it blocks more than 200 million spam text messages every month. In a lawsuit against telemarketers, the company also said that it had to deal with over 12 million unwelcome commercial text messages last year, and claims that only 4,618 got through.
Spammers also have an easier time reaching text message inboxes by virtue of the fact that guessing at 10-digit phone numbers is much easier than guessing alphanumeric email addresses.
Smishing (spam + phishing) attacks are also becoming more widespread. These tactics involve the sender of the malicious text message masquerading as a legitimate e-commerce or other financial company and trying to obtain personal information from the recipient.
Though text message spam is unlikely to reach the levels of flagrancy and commonness that email spam has attained, the danger involves is likely to grow, both in terms of the percentage of total text messages sent and received, and in terms of the personal information put at risk as more and more consumers handle their banking and other financial transactions on their mobile devices. This presents a growing opportunity not only for text message spammers, but also for companies looking to shop their filtering services and technologies.
Sources:
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/posttech/2008/03/
the_411_on_text_msg_spam.html?nav=rss_blog
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/
2008/03/09/AR2008030902213.html?hpid=moreheadlines
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