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United States Your Rights Online

FEC Permits Anonymous SMS Spam 240

Posted by michael from the one-unread-message dept.
crm114 writes "The Washington Post is running a story about the Federal Election Commission's decision today to waive the requirement that SMS broadcast messages indicate their origin..." And it'll only cost you ten cents to read each one. For what it's worth, you can read the agenda item which describes the issue before the FEC. It's rather interesting because it includes drafts of two possible responses by the FEC, depending on which way the commissioners actually voted at today's meeting. Although the company seeking the opinion suggested alternatives like providing a toll-free phone number in the message (preserving the spirit of the campaign finance disclosure rules), the FEC doesn't appear to have taken them up on it.
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FEC Permits Anonymous SMS Spam More

FEC Permits Anonymous SMS Spam

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  • Easy solution (Score:3, Funny)

    by tacokill ( 531275 ) on Thursday August 22, 2002 @04:56PM (#4122589)
    Dispute the charge. If the telcos get enough gripes, this problem with solve itself. Just answering the phone costs the telco at least $5.

    • Easier solution (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "Thank you for calling Bigfat Telco's customer service line. Due to an overwhelming number of calls, we now require that you send in your customer service request via SMS message from your SMS-capable cellular phone. You may be charged 10 cents per message, plus 10 cents per autoresponse from our customer service software with lame suggestions that don't apply to you. Bigfat Telco provides this service in lieu of human beings, which is a whole lot cheaper than answering the phone."

      Voila! On-paper cost reduction == inflated on-paper stock price. With recent events and all, you don't have to be a sleepy SEC chairman to figure out what comes next.

  • Solutution (Score:2, Insightful)

    by tomstdenis ( 446163 )
    Don't buy SMS equipment. If its going to suck why buy it?

    Duh. Besides getting TXT messages on a 7x2 LCD display is not what I call fun anyways. In the same time you can enter a relatively useful message you could have called the dude and been done with.

    Tom
    • Hm.. thats a bit of a narrow minded view of the situation. SMS has plenty of uses! For a start, if you are on a strict budget, an SMS is a lot cheaper than a phone call - you can get 460+ letters into an SMS text, and if you get familiar with the keypad you can type messages using predicitive text pretty damn quickly.

      Also, if someone isn't answering their phone (for whatever reason) you could just send them an SMS instead of making them have to phone up their voice mail retrieval.. which ususally costs them money.

      Sure a 7x2 screen isnt fun, but its enough and it gets a message across. I dont need it in full colour antialiased text to get the point :)
      • I don't believe it to be narrow minded at all.

        If a piece of technology has a use, but it annoys the hell out of me and costs me more to use it (Divx, anyone?), I think it perfectly acceptable to refuse to use it.

    • Re:Solutution (Score:5, Funny)

      by Jippy_ ( 564603 ) on Thursday August 22, 2002 @05:19PM (#4122809)
      Hello
      There
      ---
      Did you
      know
      ---
      that you
      can
      ---
      increas
      e your
      ---
      income
      in
      ---
      only
      three
      ---
      weeks
      with ........

      Oh yeah.. gonna be great...

    • Two reasons (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Goonie ( 8651 ) <.robert.merkel. .at. .benambra.org.> on Thursday August 22, 2002 @05:43PM (#4122979) Homepage
      1. In most of the world, it's much cheaper to send an SMS message than it is to make a call - here in Oz sending an SMS costs you 20c, whereas calls cost a minimum of 40c for a 30-second call (and most plans are more expensive).
      2. You can send and receive SMS messages in a noisy environment such as on public transport or at a bar. This is rather useful to the young, urban and single :)

      In Australia (and I gather everywhere else where mobiles are popular except the US) SMS is regarded as an essential feature by just about anyone under 30.

    • And this, folks, would demonstrate why the USA is at least 5 years behind the cellphone technology curve compared to Europe and Japan.
      • I dispute 5 years behind the technology curve...But then I'd have to say at least 10 years behind on the implementation curve. The technology is here, it is just our MORONIC anti-competition laws smother any attempt at co-operation, and short-sighted corporations can't see any long term financial benefit in co-operating.
      • No, it wouldn't.

        The FCC was very, VERY slow in approving Bell Telephone's request for airspace in the 800MHz frequency range so it could deploy cellular. In fact, they took TEN YEARS to approve the request.
    • 7x2 LCD display

      Phht. I get my SMS messages on my Visor Prism, with a 160x160 16-bit color screen (not that the color serves any purpose for SMS).

      Unfortunately, the only person I know who knows how to uses SMS is my wife, so they're limited to things like "don't forget to get the baby's medicine" and "i wanna *** you when we get home".
  • Looks like it's time to start coding SpamAssassin [taint.org] for SMS!

    I'm glad I don't have any of those devices...

    Wyatt

  • Teenager girls beware! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Com2Kid ( 142006 ) <com2kidSPAMLESS@gmail.com> on Thursday August 22, 2002 @05:01PM (#4122650) Homepage Journal
    Oh no, candidates are going to aggravate and thus isolate the 12-16 year old female demographic! The elections will be in turmoil!!!

    Oh waaaaiiiiiit. . . .

  • SMS spam the FEC! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Is it possible to get the FEC employees on the SMS spammers lists? Or did they give themselves immunity from such annoyances?

    :-)

    I'm joking folks, but perhaps its time for some old fashioned usenet community policing?

  • Dear Senator (Score:5, Funny)

    by deathinc ( 211433 ) on Thursday August 22, 2002 @05:04PM (#4122680)
    Dear Senator Jacka$$,

    Thank you for your recent communication to my cellphone. While I appreciate your message, "WNT2BYurVOTE", especially it's efforts at minimizing my time, I would like to refer you to the enclosed copy of my the bill I received from my wireless carrier.

    Also enclosed you will find an invoice charging you the $.10 I was charged for the reception of this unsolicited message. While I understand [Insert Political Party Here]'s fundraising isn't what it used to be, I still think this is reprehensible behavior.

    Lastly, you'll notice the bill includes a $30,000 handling fee for the disposal of your message.

    Thank you for your time, and if you really need to buy votes, please try Florida.
    • How would you know that it was really Senator Jacka$$? They don't even have to put their name on the message now.

      OTOH, it probably is Senator Jacka$$. It's always Senator Jacka$$. Blast him and his SMS spam!

  • Become your own politcal party. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Target Drone ( 546651 ) on Thursday August 22, 2002 @05:08PM (#4122713)
    Can't spammers just start their own political party now and send SMS spam without fear of reprisals.

    I can hardy wait to start receiving spam from the penis enlargement party.

  • My phone had a nice easy e-mail option on it, but because the e-mail address was the phone number for all the subbscribers on the network it was easy for spammers to guess it. So I had the option turned off.. I am not paing XXcents per spam.

  • "Paid for by..." (Score:2, Insightful)

    by alefbet ( 518838 )
    In this case, it's obvious who is paying for the message. "This text message is paid for by you under your terms of services."

  • A problem where user pays (Score:5, Informative)

    by Albanach ( 527650 ) on Thursday August 22, 2002 @05:11PM (#4122740) Homepage
    This is a problem that is exacerbated by the receiving party pays for calls and text messages trap that, as I understand it, only the US has fallen into.

    Certainly here in the UK, the calling party pays for calls and text messages and it costs nothing to receive either. As a result, mobile (cellphone) numbers are handed out freely to all and sundry, with mobile phones being used much more conspicuously by everyone aged eight upwards.

    While it does not justify spamming, the idea that SMS spamming where the receiving party actually has to pay for the junk is one that wouldn't be tolerated here, and shouldn't be tolerated in the US or anywhere else.

    • How do you bill back someone sending SMS messages from, say, ICQ?

      • Re:A problem where user pays (Score:4, Interesting)

        by superpeach ( 110218 ) <adamfNO@SPAMsnika.uklinux.net> on Thursday August 22, 2002 @06:09PM (#4123158) Homepage
        Whatever SMS provider ICQ uses will most likely charge ICQ for sending messages. They probably dont charge per message though, but amount of time connected to the SMS server. Anyone in the UK can dialup to a public SMSC with a normal modem (which supports 9.6Kbps) and send as many messages as they want and only pay for the time connected to the SMSC. The actual time connected is charged at something like 35pence/minute ($0.50 ish) and the number of 160byte messages that can be sent in one minute is much more than 3.5 (it costs 10p / SMS here in the UK for 'normal' users).
        Not that any message you ever send via ICQ ever gets delivered - none that I have tried anyway, so maybe ICQ are actually having problems with their SMS charging.
      • You don't. It's free. Deal. So's email, like God or whoever intended. Right?

        I don't think the UK telcos care really. The SMS messaging costs basically nothing for them too, the air time is miniscule.

        So, basically, the UK public get charged for wireless SMS sending only. That's 10 pence for something that probably costs under 0.05 pence!

      • Simple, the ICQ company pays for the privelege. I've never tried to send an ICQ message, but I'd hazard a guess that it probably doesn't work in countries outside of the US.
    • "This is a problem that is exacerbated by the receiving party pays for calls and text messages trap that, as I understand it, only the US has fallen into."

      It's because they want to advertise that "sending text messages is free" so people will buy into it. I find it very deceptive and annoying. When you find out the real cost, you don't want to use it because you will cost the other person money, probably without their permission.

      My carrier in Canada (Telus Mobility) used to have it that way, but it recently changes to the you only pay to receive if the sender was using a computer and not a phone. Otherwise the sender always page CAD$0.10. (This is about US$0.065).

    • I'm pretty sure that if anybody actually started receiving spam on their cell phones, they'd get pissed as hell. Definitely not my idea of an effective marketing strategy.
    • Actually, in the Unites States, it is illegal to make a telemarketing call to a phone were the receiver pays for the call (such as a cell phone). However, political calls are exempt from the law.

  • people would bitch either way (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jesseward ( 583020 ) on Thursday August 22, 2002 @05:11PM (#4122749)
    If it was voted the other way the title would have been - "FEC votes to through SMS privacy out the window, by attaching your id to each message......"

    as much as spam sucks.. people will still bitch either way...

  • open letter (Score:3, Funny)

    by poot_rootbeer ( 188613 ) on Thursday August 22, 2002 @05:13PM (#4122765)

    Dear FEC:

    FEC YOU!

    Signed,
    Poot Rootbeer
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Hrm... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Wrexen ( 151642 ) on Thursday August 22, 2002 @05:19PM (#4122806) Homepage
    Boy, it sure would be a shame of thousands of /.'ers happened to come across the cell phone numbers of the people involved in this, and they were flooded with calls that were billed at their expense...yep, sure would be a shame...

  • The Slashdot Summary is somewhat misleading (Score:5, Insightful)

    by guttentag ( 313541 ) on Thursday August 22, 2002 @05:20PM (#4122821) Journal
    The Slashdot summary is somewhat misleading. Anonymous SMS messages are already permitted, but election laws prohibit campaigns from posting messages without proper disclosure. That way there is some accountability in the campaign to inform voters. The FEC's decision simply exempts the SMS medium from the ned for this disclosure, grouping them with buttons, bumper stickers and other mediums that are just too small for disclosure statements to be practical.

    I can see why the FEC voted as it did. A standard disclosure statement like:

    Paid for by Concerned Citizens to Re-Elect Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.
    takes up 74 characters, nearly half the 160-character limit. That doesn't leave much room for a message. However, it raises a larger question: is SMS a useful medium for campaign messages to begin with?

    You can't fit much of a political message into 160 characters. Those that will fit, like "I Like Ike," are generally only effective if presented by a human being. Seeing a person wear an "I Like Ike" button is a much more powerful message than receiving an anonymous "I Like Ike" message on your phone.

    And as the article points out, wireless devices are a personal and private medium for most consumers. They should not be turned into roaming, vibrating billboards, especially since the owners of the devices will be forced to read the advertisements.

    • Make that "especially since the owners of the devices will be forced to pay to read the advertisements."

      <grumble>stupid submit button next to the preview button...</grumble>

    • "I Like Ike"

      Anybody got Tina Turner's cell phone number?
    • They should not be turned into roaming, vibrating billboards...
      On the other hand... people do some strange things with wireless devices. A portable, wireless, vibrating billboard could send just the right message to some people, but might rub others the wrong way.
    • > They should not be turned into roaming, vibrating billboards, especially since the
      owners of the devices will be forced to read the advertisements.

      But they will be.

      There are some who believe that public events venues shouldn't be named for corporations. San Francisco's Candlestick Park was so renamed, but the new San Antonio stadium hasn't ever had a proper name, being only "SBC Arena."

      Corporations do not see any reason to not plaster their names and logos on everything they can, and that is starting to include my inbox, no matter what kind of device I use.

      Heck, not too long ago there was a proposal floating around San Antonio to rename a shrine of the Texas Revolution (1836) to The American Airlines Alamo.

      Billboards, busses, taxicab signage are old news. Product placements in movies, sporting events, and now the names of public places are now becoming standard, with no way for your average individual to opt out. It doesn't matter to the people who dream these things up that we might not want them, or that they might not be annoying. Why is dropping their logo onto my desktop any different? AOL does it with virtually every piece of software I install now.

      Maybe PDAs and cell phones shouldn't be a roaming billboard, but what marketer wouldn't love a prime piece of real estate on something someone must look at -- and often -- to get work done? What makes anyone think they won't find a way? It's easy enough: Corp X buys the right from Telco Y to send Customer Z an unlimited number of text messages at no cost to Customer Z, so cost-shifting isn't an issue. The only new thing is delivery.

      • The difference is that SBC paid the owners of the San Antonio stadium to put their name on the building. With your cell phone/pager/PDA, you paid for ownership of the device and you pay for each viewing of their material. By forcing you to pay their bill, they are effectively stealing from you.

        IANAL, but I imagine a court would ultimately find that greater harm is done to consumers by SMS advertising than by FAX spamming. That is why SMS advertising and campaigning will ultimately fail if they become widespread.

  • They've just stunted the growth of another potential consumer market by virtue of their ignorance. Who the hell is gonna pay anything for SMS without relatively secure guarantees that it'll be spam-free? Email is free, and people are already pissed off enough about that.

  • Paying for unsolicited SMS (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 22, 2002 @05:31PM (#4122904)
    I work for ATT Wireless, if you don't think it's right to pay for receiving spam text messages you should sign up. There is no fee for receiving sms or e-mail messages on your tdma or gsm phone like other carriers. I don't know how they expect to mass spam sms customers, we're sure as hell not going to let them use our network for it.

    • You're right (Score:3, Informative)

      by EvilStein ( 414640 )
      Being a current ATT Wireless employee myself, I know how this is. It's very easy to SPAM cell phones. That's why it's a good thing AWS doesn't charge people to get text messages. Cingular charges $0.10 for each message, sent or received. That can really add up if you're getting quite a lot of SPAM.

    • At&t prostitute alert! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ChaosMt ( 84630 ) on Thursday August 22, 2002 @07:10PM (#4123490) Homepage
      Anonymous coward indeed! 10 minutes after reading this, the following message was sent to my at&t phone:

      "Good news! You can now use your AT&T Wireless phone to make international calls to over 220 countries. Visit [censored] for rates & info"
      Sender: 9263
      Sent: August 22, 2002 16:32 PT

      It COMPLETELY freaked me out!!! Since I ONLY used the pager/sms as an emergency contact and I rarely get paged (unlike the sysadmin days), my first reaction was anexity and concern for my family. I had to stop being productive today due to At&t insisting on forcing their advertising through a service plan I pay for. Which, by the way, it is something I get charged for, and there is a line item on my bill. But that's not the point - we pay for it even if there is no line for it on the bill. Just because it's "included" doesn't mean I am not paying for the service. I find it deeply insulting that I should pay for a service that does not act as it should and actively seeks to dimish the quality of it's service through captive audience techniques.

      I am very upset and harmed by At&t's actions and as such, I wouldn't mind hearing from civil litigation and personal injury rats^H^H^H^H^H laywers on how I may persue this matter and seek restitiution for the harm they have caused me:
      - personal trauma
      - loss of work
      - theft of service
      - telecom fruad
      - bait & switch

      Since government action has removed any hope of my ever being able to obtain lawyers, guns or money, I might suggest the slashdot effect be directed at the above sender. :)

    • I hate people have to post anonymous when they say the company ne, or they have to keep the name secret in thier posts.

      Anyways... An engineer over at ATTWS ported an irc client to hdml(pre-wap) website, hows that for super geeky. Much better than SMS (imho)..

      Heres a tip you might not know, ATTWS to stop spam cold on the Pocketnet service, changed from phone numbers to a 14 digits number, so if you wanted to spam someone, you had to send out 10K emails to reach 1 person. BTW, spam triggers would start and block a large ammount of spam.

      The isp spam war that nobody talks about.

    • I also work for a wireless carrier, but since I am in the switch, I won't pimp the carrier. Basically, we run a linux based SMS server which is intellegent enough to stop spam messages of this kind. It looks at the recipient address, and if it sees that it is just a sequential count, it blocks that message, and any further messages from the offending sender. Occassionally, we are supposed to go through and make sure none of our subscribers are on the blocked list, and if they are, we have our customer support contact them, and find out if this was an error. There hasn't been any abuse (by our customers) so far. Not having to pay for the SMS is fine, but since I get status messages, and complaints via SMS, I have to check the damn thing every time it beeps. Getting a ping pong of negative ads would definately mess with my very limited off time. I don't know if any of the bigger carriers have this kind of filtering. Just my 2 cents, and I could be wrong.
    • Of course AT&T has no problem with SMS-spamming its customers on its own, sending me vital messages about exciting services.

      It is completely inappropriate for AT&T to use SMS for any sort of unsolicited advertising. That's not what I'm paying you for.

    • (Partial)Bullshit.

      I have a phone through ATTWS, and I pay for messages over my alloted amount. I used to have an unlimited quota, but now I don't. I was forced into a new plan to get a break on another pricing issue, and I was told that unlimited messages were no longer an option. i.e. Once I switched plans, I COULD NOT GO BACK to an unlimited SMS pricing plan.

      ATTWS eastern WA state

    • Funny...I have ATT wireless and I get charged $0.10 for every message I receive.
  • Erm... geeze, that's very darn harsh... In Australia at least, SMS only costs the SENDER money, it's free to receive them.

    Although there are the cases where you request information from a service, and they cost (I assume), although they are things you've explicitely asked for... how can it be legal to charge someone to receive messages on their phone they don't want?

    I have received a couple of pieces of spam SMS here... but they didn't cost me anything to read and delete them straight away...

    • Yeah well, in the US, many carriers do charge you for received SMS (and received calls, etc, etc) We're a wireless backwater and we know it. Course I carry a cell phone for just that - the phone. I could give a rats butt about SMS wireless internet on a 7x3 screen, etc. Even these newer 3G wannabe phones with cameras and color screens - WTF for? If I want a computer capability of some kind - I'll plug my laptop into my phone as a modem - and I've yet to do that. I don't wanna be THAT connected. I'd rather explore a city wardriving :)

  • This only affects political advertising (Score:3, Informative)

    by decathexis ( 451196 ) on Thursday August 22, 2002 @05:40PM (#4122963) Homepage
    This decision has nothing to do with anonymous SMS. It only waives the requirement that a political message tells who paid for it.

    The first paragraph of the article:

    "A decision by federal election regulators to exempt text-based wireless ads from campaign disclosure rules has critics warning that consumers could find their mobile phones subject to a flood of political spam as campaign 2002 kicks into high gear."

  • Polling restrictions (Score:2, Interesting)

    by fiori ( 45848 )
    This certainly gets around the rescrictions of campaigning not allowed within 100 feet (or whatever it is) of the polls. Just wait until the SMS messages start flooding the phone system on election day. How will the FEC react when voters are bombarded with SMS spam in the ballot booth.

    "Vote for ....."

    Right.
  • From the article ... "The Federal Election Commission (FEC) today approved a New Jersey technology firm's petition to waive disclosure rules for political ads delivered via SMS.

    So it's not a politician or "interest group" looking for the FEC ruling. It's a provate business.

    No doubt the NJ tech firm is seeing dollar signs in being a conduit for delivery of political messages via SMS. For all the naysayers who contend that SMS political spamming will never happen ... take note that tech firms don't usually lay out cashola to petition the FEC on obscure rules if they don't see a monetary benefit in the proposition. They want to make money. No doubt have garnered interest from politicians who will pay for their service in the coming election season.

  • Perfect! (Score:2, Funny)

    by DavesError ( 550952 )
    Now I can be reminded on my phone that there are thousands of horny bitches just waiting for me!

  • Limited to political ads only, huh? (Score:3, Funny)

    by SysKoll ( 48967 ) on Thursday August 22, 2002 @06:53PM (#4123375)

    According to the article, the SMS spams wouldbe limited to political messages only.

    Yeah, sure, I can see it now..

    Dear registered Democrat voter,

    Your support in the upcoming election is crucial. You can't let Jesse Helmes get reelected *again*, can you? Help us get rid of him! Our plan is to send him a kit comprising our patented Herbal Viagra, our Miracle Penis Enlargement pill and our Female Attractor Pheromone After-Shave. Pretty soon the old geezer will be too busy to leave home, and then he'll die of sheer exhaustion.

    But we need to test the kit first. That's why we're offering it to you for only $199.99. We figured that as it is, you probably don't get much. Why else would you be a registered Democrat voter?

    Don't delay, act now, call 1-800-SMS-SPAM.

    See why I have my doubts about the political message only exemption?

    -- SysKoll

    P.S. I could have picked Hillary and the Republicans. Nothing personal.

  • That's why I can let my network monitoring utilities go ahead and send me SMS messages.. I don't get charged for them. :-) Other carriers might charge $0.10, but at least one doesn't...
  • I don't have a problem with them leaving out "paid for by" stuff as long as the SMS headers say who sent it, just like email (well, presuming it can't be forged like email). If you can't tell who sent it, then that's a problem with SMS itself that needs to be remedied, irrespective of who's sending them.
  • Or is it 100ft? No campaigning within x feet of a polling place? Will this mean that they can't send the ads on voting day?

  • I'll sue! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by GuNgA-DiN ( 17556 )
    If some asshole starts spamming my phone I'll sue my provider for allowing it to happen! Junk mail in my physical mailbox is bad enough.. but, at least they pay for that (and it keeps the postal service in business). But, if I'm paying for it I'm going to nip that shit in the butt real quick!
  • I can't believe it costs you money to receive an SMS or a mobile phone call. You guys (North Americans) have such a weird mobile phone system! It seems really unfair that the recipient has to pay when the recipient cannot control the actions of the people calling or sending SMS messages. Especially since marketers are starting to send SMS advertising messages - clearly the marketers should have to pay for that! North America is truly unique in this regard - everywhere else in the world (Europe, Australia, Asia etc) the person making the phone call is the one who pays - just like it is for fixed-line calls.
    • The other side of the coin is that local phone calls between landline phones are free most places in the U.S. (Where I live now, there's a 10 cent per call charge, but no per minute charge.) That's how the crazy system came about: there is no infrastructure to bill the person making a call to a cell phone number in the local area.
    • It's even funnier that people willfully select SMS services knowing that this will happen.
  • From the article linked to in the story:
    Target Wireless of Fort Lee, N.J., joined by advertising industry groups and a Republican campaign committee, argued that current campaign disclosure rules would require political advertisers to use up too much of the limited amount of text -- 160 characters total -- available for individual SMS messages.
    While I can believe that the wording that is currently legally mandated for identifying the originator of a political advertisement may be too long for practical use in an SMS message, dropping the requirement for identification altogether seems a perverse response. The requirement was presumably enacted because political communications were deemed sufficiently significant that it should be possible to hold their senders to account, and for their receivers to be able to take the senders' views into account when evaluating the messages (all rather undermined by the practice of setting up arm's-length action groups to peddle messages, but that's a different issue).

    Better would be to retain the requirement that the originator be readily identifiable but allow more flexibility in the form that this takes: "Sent from http://www........org/", for example, would still leave enough room in the message to be usable. (The originator phone number shown with the message isn't adequate identification, IMHO, because it puts too much onus on the receiver expend time and money to track the originator down, though it should be a requirement that the number is a genuine toll-free one operated by the message originator and manned at the time the messages are sent...)

    Quite why any candidate or organisation would want to use this medium in a country where many of the recipients will have to pay to receive the message is left as an exercise for the reader.

  • My biggest concern regarding SMS/text paging is how wireless carriers like Nexel make it trivial [nextel.com] to send a massive payload of messages, just by knowing the area code/exchange and creating a program to hit every possible number combination.

    Especially with a high propability rate of success, being that wireless providers can fill up exchanges pretty fast with subscribers. A more logical approach would be for each cellular subscriber to create a unique alias and/or number combination for sending messages, making brute force attacks much less propable (assuming you don't post your address on the web, only to be harvested by email-harvesting spam-spiders).

    Or, disabling the option altogether. As a Nextel subscriber, there's nothing I could do to stop someone from costing me 10 cents a text message - it comes with every plan i've seen, so theoretically it would be easy to hit almost every subscriber within an NPA/exchange.

  • Americans have to PAY to RECIEVE an SMS???

    No wonder it never took of over there...
  • There's a key difference between e-mail spam and anonymous SMS. Where anon SMS can be used for, say, flirting or a number of social events, it cannot be used in bulk without putting a plentitude of nickels on the cashier's desk.

    Spam costs relatively nothing, SMS still costs a nickel or two to send. Do you really think a spammer will shell out $100k to reach a million mobile subs with his "Enlarge your penis now!!" message?

    I don't see the danger of misuse for spam as that high - I see the pros outweighing that risk.

    (However, I still think Europe has a better charging model where the initiating party always pays in full for the telecom transaction - you never pay to receive in Europe, except in a few special circumstances which you are always aware of when they occur and have to deliberately initiate. But that's another story altogether.)

  • But dammit, I don't want to... (Score:3, Funny)

    by foxtrot ( 14140 ) on Friday August 23, 2002 @07:34AM (#4125604)
    ...add three inches to my cellphone!
  • The GSM association guideing principals on Privacy has a specific section of SMS advertising in their document AA-38 (Only available to GSM operators) I quote the section below:

    IV. WIRELESS ADVERTISING

    The GSMA recognizes that traditional advertising models may not apply to wireless services due to technology and application limitations, the restrictive user interface, and the as yet unproven effectiveness of and market for such services. Indeed, the wireless advertising industry is in its infancy. The GSMA supports the development of standards for advertising and cooperation with marketing associations to ensure that privacy is protected while new channels for information dissemination are developed. However, the GSMA guiding principle is that advertising sent to any wireless mobile device requires user consent and clear identification of the sender.

    There are two basic forms of wireless advertising today. First, wireless "push" advertising covers any content sent by or on behalf of advertisers and marketers to a wireless mobile device at a time other than when the subscriber requests it. Push advertising may include voice or audio, short message service ("SMS") messages, e-mail, multimedia messaging, cell broadcast, picture messages, surveys, or any other pushed advertising or content. Second, and in contrast to push advertising, wireless "pull" advertising covers any content sent to a wireless subscriber upon his or her request.

    Wireless portals may evolve where a third kind of advertising - passive - become viable, but at present, limitations on the size of the user interface has made this impractical. Instead, it is much more common for a mobile network operator today to brand the user interface with its own messages. It is assumed that such messaging is within the customer relationship.

    The difference between push and pull advertising is palpable when viewed through the GSMA Data Privacy Guidelines. In pull advertising, the user consents to receive the information from a known source. Of course, the marketing initiative must provide notice to the user of any personal information that is collected, how it will be used and to whom it will be disclosed. The user not only must consent to receive the advertisement but also must consent to any other information practice.

    In the case of push advertisement, the user seldom knows the source of the message and has never asked to receive the information. Unsolicited wireless communications from third parties generally occur without the knowledge or consent of the mobile network operator as well. The GSMA Data Privacy Guidelines reject "wireless spam." Of course, the GSMA does not include within this definition certain push messages from emergency service providers that warn consumers of impending dangers or problems such bad weather or traffic mishaps.

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