20 percent of mobile users receive SMS Spam

Research: Thurs 23rd April 2009

Slowly but surely: mobile spam is on the rise. European mobile operators says that 20 percent of mobile users are now affected by SMS spam according to research by Cloudmark.

Countries such as India and China have significant lower message rates and are therefore more exposed to mobile spam. As payment models in Europe are beginning to change, its predicted that spam will become a public issue. Neil Cook, Head of Technical Services EMEA at Cloudmark says "It is not a question of 'if' but 'when' spam becomes economically viable".

In China, where message costs are as low as $0.001 per message, it is estimated that 25-30 percent of all messages are spam, and that 300 billion spam messages, some 15-20 per day, were received by users in 2008 alone.

When the 'Spam ROI' becomes feasible, payment models will no longer protect the users. Some initiatives, such as Vodafone's VSpam available for UK users to report unwanted messages to short code 87726, are beginning to emerge. However, Europe has not been enough paying attention to the problem, and the industry is now urged to take more responsibility. "Systems often fail because the people who guard and maintain them don't bear the full costs of failure". Says Professor Ross Anderson, Professor of Security Engineering at the University of Cambridge's Computer Laboratory.

In some cases, there is a thin line between spam and legitimate marketing messages. The development is sharp a reminder to marketers to respect users media choices and privacy, and the key is, according to Cloudmark, to involve users much more when developing mobile communication strategies.

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