Every now and then, my cell phone will chirp in a certain way to tell me I have a text message. The only problem is, I never send text messages, and nobody ever sends them to me. Of course, text messaging is very useful, I just don’t have much need for it. So what is my cell phone doing telling me I have a text message? In every case, it’s an advertisement.

Now I have nothing against advertisements, and if it’s something I’m interested in, I want to see it. But, I don’t want to have to pay ten cents for the privilege. Nobody should. And in a corporate environment, where a company may be paying for dozens, or hundreds of cell phone accounts, text message spam can add up to a big extra expenditure in the cell phone line item.

This week, U.S. Senators Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Bill Nelson (D-Fla) introduced a new piece of legislation called the m-SPAM Act. The legislation prohibits commercial text messages to wireless numbers that are on the Federal “Do Not Call” registry. The bill also gives more authority to the FCC and FTC to regulate the unwanted text message spam. The “Do Not Call” registry allows U.S. residents to place their phone numbers on a list, and solicitors are then not allowed to call. Until now though, there has been nothing to prevent spammers from sending out text messages to peddle whatever useless and overpriced thing they have on offer. The CAN-SPAM Act does not address text messaging.

Text message spam, besides being an annoyance, could potentially be dangerous, especially when sent to smartphone devices. It is conceivable that a text message could contain a virus or malicious software, or a link to a malicious Web site.

The NYT recently reported that AT&T had spammed its customers with text messages encouraging them to watch the season premiere of American Idol, a show which is sponsored by the company. According to the NYT, AT&T claim that the messages were not spam as the recipients were provided with an option to elect to opt out of future spam advertizing campaigns.  “It’s clearly marked in the message what you need to do if you don’t want to participate. It couldn’t be more open and transparent,” said an At&T spokesman.

The Federal Trade Commission agree that AT&T did nothing (legally) wrong. From the NYT article:

          Claudia Bourne Farrell, a spokeswoman for the Federal Trade Commission, said the message had not appeared to violate the commission’s rules or the law. It would do so only if it cost recipients or was deceptive in some way, and did not allow recipients to turn off future messages.

So, was this spam or not? To my mind, it undoubtedly was. The majority of people would probably define spam in much the same way that Wikipedia do (“Spam is the abuse of electronic messaging systems to indiscriminately send unsolicited bulk messages”) and it’s a description which applies perfectly to AT&T’s messages. Whether or not AT&T actually broke the law is really by the by; the messages were spam. Plain and simple.

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