Mobile Messaging Abuse On the Rise

mobile technology

As expected, mobile spam, phishing and virus attacks will increase this year. However, the attacks vary from region to region. A new study conducted by messaging security company Cloudmark shows mobile attacks in the U.S. are fairly primitive or harmless compared to more "developed" regions (in terms of mobile technology) like Asia and Europe.

E-mail-to-mobile attacks are the common types in the U.S. Because text messaging through Internet is enabled in all major U.S. operators, it has become a cost-effective weapon for many scammers. In fact, more than 25% of SMS sent through Internet are categorized as e-mail-to-mobile attacks. Here are other stats to consider:

  • In 2007, 1.1 million SMS spam messages were received in the U.S., a 38 percent increase from 2006
  • In 2008, the number is expected to grow by almost 50 percent to 1.5 million

These are mostly unsolicited ads or "Google pages" scams but with the developments on m-commerce and mobile marketing mobile attacks are expected to be more sophisticated as well.

For more details, read the press release


| February 11th, 2008 | Posted in Mobile Commerce, Mobile Internet, Mobile Technologies |

2 Responses to “Mobile Messaging Abuse On the Rise”

  1. Ainsworth Boyle Says:

    The most important message in this post is that the majority of the SPAM issues are coming from unsolicited “long-code” spam and little of it is coming from registered shortcodes. If the carriers are going to protect the mobile marketing space a bit more diligence will be needed to cover the long-code email/internet texting spam.

    The carriers/aggregators/asps do a solid job of protecting spam over shortcodes (because the MMA has laid out such comprehensive guidelines). The open lines from the internet paint a bad picture because they are all – despite long vs short code – sent to the same inbox.

  2. netlog Says:

    Thanks you.!!

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