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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/10/technology/10spam.html?th&emc=th

Spam Moves to Cellphones and Gets More Invasive

Christopher Capozziello for The New York Times By LAURA M. HOLSON Published: May 10, 2008 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.”