Phone Spam Coming Soon To You
August 22nd, 2010 | by Mobile Data Group |Mobile phone “spam” now accounts for half of all complaints about nuisance messaging, putting it up there with spam email, according to the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA).
This follows a noticeable jump in the use of SMS by fraudsters in the past year.
A new reporting mechanism introduced by the authority - a dedicated mobile phone line to which you can forward spam messages - is averaging 100 contacts a week, says the manager of the ACMA’s anti-spam team, Julia Cornwell McKean.
At one point, scammers cashing in on football World Cup fever caused a spike in reports to about 50 a day, she says.
While the volume of spam email is still far greater than spam SMS, people are more likely to complain about the latter because they consider contact by mobile phone very personal, Cornwell McKean says. Thus reports of spam to the regulator are now evenly split between email and SMS.
There are two types of spam SMS - from legitimate businesses seeking to promote goods or services; and from dubious characters running scams.
“Probably up until a year ago it was almost all the ‘legitimate’ type of SMS message,” Cornwell McKean says. “But over the past year we’ve started to see spam scams on the rise.” Perhaps it is because of the falling cost of SMS.
A consumer’s best response to spam SMS depends on whether the source is a legitimate business or a scammer.
Under the Spam Act businesses must have the consent of the person they’re messaging, which includes consent “inferred” due to an existing business relationship. They must declare who they are, how they can be contacted and include a way for people to “unsubscribe” - perhaps allowing the consumer to text back the word “stop”.
Cornwell McKean cautions, however, that you shouldn’t respond in any way if there’s a chance the message is from a scammer. “When people receive spam scams via SMS they should, firstly, ignore the message,” she says. “Do not reply, do not text ’stop’ because it just tells the scammer your number is one that’s in use” - and that will only invite further messages.
Instead, use your phone’s “forward” function to send the text message to ACMA’s Spam SMS line on 0429 999 888. You can leave it at that, or you can register your details at spam.acma.gov.au so the regulator can contact you if it has any further questions about the message as they try to track down the perpetrator.