Well, it seems like people in the United Kingdom have found that it doesn’t take long to keep a good spammer down.

Just recently, companies that run large call centers in Eastern Europe and India began sending nuisance text messages to millions of mobile phone users advertising legal services that offer no-win, no-fee representation for accident claims.

How it works

The operation works in the same way an email spam campaign does. First, the call center sends out millions of unsolicited SMS messages to their victims’ mobile devices telling them that they can receive compensation for their “accident” claim by responding. The messages are sent out using prepaid phones with unlimited messaging plans and cost the call center two pence to send, or the equivalent of three cents. After sending thousands of messages, the SIM card for the phone is simply discarded and replaced with a new one.

The call center then sells each response to a claims farmer in the United Kingdom for 5 pounds, which is close to 8 dollars, who then contacts the victim and decides if the claim is worth pursuing. Those claims that the farmer feels are legitimate are then passed onto lawyers who pay up to 500 pounds, just shy of 800 dollars, for the information.

Once the law firm has the information, they go through the normal procedures of filing an accident/injury claim on behalf of their new client bringing the firm thousands of dollars.

There are even cases of the call centers being paid for responses asking the recipient to be removed from the messaging list. Why? Because it is a legitimate number that can be used in later spam campaigns.

The numbers

So just how troublesome is SMS spam becoming? If you look at some of the recent numbers, you can see that it is actually quite profitable for the spammers.

• 1 in 3 mobile customers in the UK report having received one of these messages last month
• Over a month there was a total of 12.75 million nuisance text messages sent by these call centers
• The industry is estimated to be worth just over 280 million dollars
• It is estimated that only three percent of the people who received these messages actually responded

So looking at these numbers, it costs only 382,500 dollars to send out spam messages that in the end make over 280 million. With a profit margin like this you can see why this trend has grown to include other popular spam topics like debt management.

Fighting back

Since there is a lack of solutions to filter SMS spam on a mobile device people who receive spam this way have to take matters into their own hands if they want to fight back. Most mobile carriers allow their customers to report text messages they believe to be spam by forwarding the message to the short code 7726, which spells out spam on a telephone’s keypad. Individual carriers also provide different tools to block specific numbers and set up aliases to help reduce the amount of SMS spam.

In addition to the carriers fighting this battle, two organizations the GSM Association made up of mobile operators and the Open Mobile Alliance are both in the process of piloting ways for mobile users to report suspected spam.

China mobile carriers have also entered the fight by limiting the number of messages that can be sent from phones. Currently, a phone on one of the three major carriers in China can only send up to 200 messages an hour and up to 1000 per day.

Of course the user can also help prevent their number from being harvested by spammers. Just like we have learned to protect our email addresses online, security through obscurity is currently one of the best ways to prevent your number from being a target. Avoid submitting your number to sites that offer free ringtones, backgrounds or and other giveaways. Also, it is recommended that you are careful about sending messages to short codes when you don’t know who is on the other end.

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SMS Spam on the Rise in the UK

Researchers at the Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology-Delhi have taken a novel approach to combatting the rash of SMS spam plaguing mobile phone users. SMSAssassin is the brain child of a team of researchers at IIIT-Delhi including Kuldeep Yadav, Rushil Khurana, Dipesh Kumar Singh, and Dr. Ponnurangam Kumaraguru. The software, which was developed for Nokia’s Symbian operating system based phones, combines Bayesian filtering with user submitted blacklists that use crowdsourcing to identify spam. They are currently working on expanding this solution to users of other phones, developing software version for Android based phones and those that run on Windows mobile. There is no mention of an iOS based version at this time.

Even though India has a DND registry, an estimated 100 million SMS spam messages are sent to India mobile phone users each day. This provides the group plenty of source material with which to work. With so many carriers, and no central place to parse these messages, the team is taking advantage of social media to help build train the system. They are currently taking requesting submissions through their Facebook site. On their site, they ask users to forward spam SMS messages to  +91 8826068429. To encourage users to participate, they are offering prizes for the highest volume submitter every 15 days. The researchers envision a future version where users of the SMSAssassin software might submit received spam messages to a central server, or form Bluetooth based distributed networks of participants, but the social media approach is taking off for them.

SMS messages are very short, and often use regional terms or abbreviations. This makes it difficult to identify spam using traditional markers. According to Kumaraguru, the crowdsourcing aspect enables the system to constantly update itself to new trends and changing tactics of spammers, and respond quickly to spam targeted to specific time periods, such as holidays. The researched are looking at this solution as a mobile-cloud based application.

How much is SMS spam a problem in your part of the world?

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Using Crowdsourcing to Counter SMS Spam

With that in mind, let’s take a look at some other forms of spam out there including tips on how to avoid them.

1. Email Spam
   As noted earlier, email spam is something that we are very familiar with.  In fact, in my blog post Why You Should Invest in Spam Protection I explain the importance of not allowing spam free reign in your business.  There are many techniques that can be deployed, ranging from advanced Bayesian Spam Filtering that can be implemented on your own email server, or a hosted spam filtering service.  The battle is never-ending though, so do check back often for new developments on this blog!

2. Comment Spam
   Corporate blogs have quickly become an indispensible means of spreading the word on new products and services, as well as a means to obtain timely feedback from customers.  As you might expect, spammers have been quick to subvert the ability to post comments for their nefarious purpose.

   Fortunately, there is a plethora of tools with which to battle comment spam.  Cloud-based web services like Akismet exists to sieve out comment spam and trackback spam, for which plug-ins have already been developed for most blog or CMS implementations. Enabling the use of CAPTCHAS is also reasonably effective against automated postings.

   Other tips for popular sites would be to automatically close comments on articles after a reasonable number of days and holding a comment in moderation until approved – at least for the first time.  Of course, more advanced techniques like Bayesian filtering, blacklisting of IPs and comment throttling can also be employed at heavily trafficked sites.

3. Instant Messenger Spam
   While not as prevalent as in the past, the occasional instant messaging (IM) spam run continue to take place periodically. The easiest way to stay on top of the situation would be to ignore any invites from unknown persons, and to consider links from strangers to be outright hostile, or a phishing attempt.  Even when offered a URL from existing friends, one important precaution to take (especially if it’s a shortened URL) would be to first verify that your pal’s account has not fallen victim to a successful phishing attempt and commandeered by a mindless script.

   Also, a lesser known fact is that practically every IM service has some sort of profile page or directory listing from which spammers might harvest your contact details.  As such, it makes sense to take the effort to configure your configuration accordingly.  Privacy options vary, but AIM allows you to disable determining your screen name by using your e-mail address (Default: Linked), while Yahoo! Messenger allows you to hide your profile from others (Default: Visible to everyone).

4. Junk Fax
   The fax machine is certainly not used as much as it was in its heyday, though many businesses still find themselves forced to rely on it occasionally.  The presence of the odd fax does mean that some businesses become the unwitting recipient of junk fax transmissions, however.

   Thankfully, there are many ways to combat junk fax, assuming businesses are aware of them. For example, most fax machines these days come with the ability to store incoming fax transmissions in memory, giving users a chance to preview them prior to printing; more advanced models could even be configured to forward them as a PDF attachment to specified e-mail accounts.  Yet another alternative involves subscribing to an electronic fax service, foregoing any hardware investment altogether.

5. Unsolicited Text Messages
   Unsolicited text messages (SMS) is one of those vectors that is hard to filter against.  As a preventive measure, it’s always good not to give out one’s contact details by filling up “lucky draw” forms or surveys.  On the positive front, the costs of sending text messages means spamming can become expensive quickly, and it is (comparatively) easy to trace the source of text messages and file a complaint with your provider.  What is critical here is that users are trained not to click on any proffered links, given the popularity of smartphones that might be prone to malware spread using it.
6. Social Networking Spam
   As with practically every new medium, spammers have started to flood social networking sites with spam and phishing attempts.  Efforts for now are limited to messages or wall posts, though this will certainly evolve over time.  For now, Twitter offers a great number of tools to protect its users, and it is possible to block or un-join accounts used to spam without notifying them about it.  Where Facebook is concerned, my advice would be to impose a policy of only befriending those that you know explicitly.  Ultimately, users need to be wary of clicking on URLs, given the widespread use of shortened URLs on most social networking media.

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6 Different Types of Spam and How to Avoid Them

Twam fell from high of 11% in August 2009 to new low of less than 1% in February 2010.

“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet”, wrote the bard. Spam, on the other hand, by any other name still smells as foul.

As people look beyond email for communicating with other people, spammers, too, have expanded their repertoire. In the process, they’ve expanded the list of expletives for their excretory practices.

Spam has always had a negative connotation in cyberspace, but its current connection to email appeared only in the 1990s. Before that, it was used to describe certain obnoxious behavior on local bulletin board systems and later, to the excessive posting of multiple messages on Usenet.

When spammers branched out beyond email, the term spam branched out with them. That dilution of the term, though, proved unsatisfactory to some users, and they began to coin their own terms for specific kinds of spam, with amusing results.

Once the Blogosphere got cooking, for example, spammers began targeting the comment sections of blogs with their ejunk.  That kind of spam, which became known as “blam,” would post bogus comments to a blog, as well as Wikis and Web site guest books,  and was designed to drive traffic to the spammer’s Web site. To counter blam, CAPTCHA was introduced to the Web.

CAPTCHA, or Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart, requires a would-be commenter to type into a form some distressed letters that are flashed on the screen. What’s displayed is an image of the letters, not actual type. Because the letters aren’t type, they can’t be read by spambots. And because they’re distressed, it’s difficult for them to be scanned and translated into type by OCR software.

Instant Messaging is another target of spammers. IM spam, or spim, isn’t as widespread as email spam, so most of the time it remains under the media’s radar. However, Microsoft recently settled a spim lawsuit against a Hong Kong-based company called Funmobile. As part of the settlement, Microsoft obtained an injunction against Funmobile to bar it from spimming the users of Softzilla’s Live Messenger service. It also received a cash payment, the amount of which was not disclosed to the public. According to the lawsuit, Funmobile used spimming to obtain the personal information of Live Messenger users, information that was used by third parties to send mass spam and phishing messages to the users’ contacts.

The Internet telephone service Skype has grown in popularity over the years and as is sadly too true on the Net, popularity is a magnet for spammers, or in Skype’s case, skammers. Skam, as Skype spam has been called, has been around since the middle of the decade and despite claims from time to time by Skype’s operators that they’ve licked the problem, it keeps popping up like a noggin on a decapitated hydra. Last month, the service made yet more changes it hopes will give it the upper hand in its battle against skam. It includes making it easier for users to report skammers after blocking them.

“These reports are very useful to us,” wrote Peter Parkes in the company’s blog. “They help us to detect patterns in spam activity, as well as allowing us to disable the accounts of individual spammers. So you’re not just reporting a single spammer–you’re helping us to reduce the total amount of spam on Skype.”

I’ve had a cellphone for years, but it was only last week that I received my first smam. Smam is spam delivered by text, or SMS, message. You’d think that spammers would have jumped on the smam bandwagon by now, but apparently the barriers to entering the field aren’t to their liking. As Amir Lev ex plained in a recent PC World column, it costs money to send SMS messages while the alternative, email, costs nothing. “[I]n the SMS world, the privilege of sending bulk SMS is reserved for those with money and a valid contract,” he writes. “Bulk SMS might cost a few cents per message to send: a couple of orders of magnitude more than email.”

At one time, twams were a lot more troublesome than they are today. Twams are spam messages sent on Twitter. Actually, Twitter has a broader definition of spam than that. It includes Posting harmful links to phishing or malware sites, repeatedly posting duplicate tweets, and aggressively following and un-following accounts to attract attention. According to the company, though, its campaign to squash twam is bearing fruit. From a high point in August of last year when 11 percent of all daily tweets were twam, it’s plummeted to less than one percent a day in February of this year.

Facebook has been known to be hit by spam but so far, no cute terms have been attached to the practice. How does fabam sound?

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Spam by any other name…

          “Sexy View is important in many ways. It is the first text message worm ever. It’s also the first mobile phone worm that circumvents the signature checks that are meant to secure the latest smartphones. The motive behind it seems to be to collect information for mobile phone spamming purposes. Mobile phone spam is already a big problem in some parts of the world – eventually it will be an issue everywhere.” said an F-Secure researcher.

Previously this worm was confined to phones running the SymbianOS but has now spread beyond them. It’s not yet known if one mobile OS is more vulnerable than the other, but the good news is that at least for now, the threat is largely contained to China. However you can be sure it, or a similar piece of mobile malware will hit other shores sooner rather than later.

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First Ever SMS Virus Discovered

Brendan Battles, the man behind both the site and the spam, has been a known spammer for many years. Back in 2003 he sued Spamhaus for blacklisting his Emarketers.org site, but quickly dropped the suit just a few months later. In 2006, he was accused of spamming for broadband accounts and telephone calling rates. According to the “Spam Kings” book, Battles sent up to 50 million spam messages a day hyping scams such as subliminal weight loss.

Unfortunately, since the bulk of Battles’ spamming activities both in the U.S. and in New Zealand took place before either country had anti-spam laws in place, he has never been charged with, or convicted of, spamming. Now that such laws are in place, it’s a sure bet that Battles will finally have his day in court.

SMS spam is especially infuriating because most people pay to receive texts, meaning each spam message they get costs them money. Most cellular providers work hard to block spam texts from getting through, but like spam filters, they aren’t perfect. I received a text spam the other day telling me I had a new message from a “hot girl” at a website I’d never heard of. Needless to say it was promptly deleted. I have an unlimited texting plan, but for someone who pays a .10 a message fee, you can see how having to pay for such trash can become a very big problem!

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Newest “Spam King” Turns to SMS Spam