Text Message Spam: The Next, and Costly, Frontier?

The San Francisco Chronicle has an interesting article today about text message spam. Interestingly, I wrote earlier here about how a device I had activated for testing purposes at work was full of text message spam the day after I activated it. In fact, I eventually had to get a new number as the spam was skewing the data I was retrieving.

What I didn't think about when I wrote that article, since it was a test device, was how this would affect someone on their personal phone. As the Chronicle says, many people pay for any text messages they receive ... this could really add up to a chunk of change quickly.

Although some people, including William Baker, a Washington attorney and expert in telecom law, say that carriers are doing their job by delivering messages as they are sent, others (including me) wonder why they can't filter for spam text messages in the same way that email is checked for spam. Or, even better, why not use a whitelist format, where only users you specify can send you text messages? After all, the list of people most want to receive text messages from is usually small.

The article indicates Cingular has some control over text messages, and since I have Cingular, I went to their site. I had already set up an alias, and there is a setting:

"Block messages sent to yournumber@cingularme.com or wireless number. Messages sent to your alias will be delivered."

However, if I try to send a text message to myalias@cingularme.com from my Windows Mobile 2003 device, it won't do it. It says I can't send messages to an email address. Which makes sense, but then how can someone text message me?

There is a also a "Apply Spam control" setting, a "Block all text messages sent to you as e-mail" setting, and more. So I'm actually wondering if the message spam is really coming through as emails.

At any rate, I'm not sure what other carriers provide. But I would dearly love the whitelist option.

Tags: Technology, Cingular, Verizon, Sprint, SMS, MMS