Mobile spam: Be afraid, be very afraidWe've all experienced them in one way or another: Spam. Electronic junk messages, the gadfly of electronic mail. Unwanted messages that scream instant weight-loss programs and money-making schemes, often mass-mailed to hapless users. Worse, there are now signs that spam could make the leap to mobile phones. The problem is already prevalent in Japan, where mobile operator NTT DoCoMo is reported to have invested one billion yen (US$7.76 million) to block spam.
In the U.S. last year, Phoenix-based lender Acacia National Mortgage allegedly sent about 170,000 SMS (Short Messaging Service) messages to thousands of phone users in Colorado and Arizona. One sample message went: The incident has since been held up as a classic case of cellphone spam. According to the Wall Street Journal, Acacia president Gerry Youhanaie insisted there was nothing wrong with what he did, and added that hundreds of people responded to the message.
Mobile operator Verizon Wireless eventually took Acacia to court, and the case was settled when Acacia agreed to stop sending repeated, unsolicited commercial text messages to Verizon's customers.
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