Saturday, May 3, 2003
Watch Out for Wireless Spam
Posted by Jason Dunn in "NEWS" @ 02:19 PM
"Panelists on the second day of a three-day spam forum sponsored by the Federal Trade Commission agreed Thursday that text-based advertisements, already common in Japan and Europe, are coming to U.S. users of wireless devices. Some of those messages, inevitably, will be spam.
While some panelists said current U.S. laws are inadequate for dealing with wireless spam, members of the cell phone industry said they're already taking steps to avoid the influx of spam that has saturated the wired Internet. Unlike the free-for-all Internet, wireless carriers are treating their networks as private property and are planning to kill off bulk text messages at gateways before they hit customer in-boxes."
I think this is a very real fear. Spam on the desktop is irritating, but considering most people don't pay for bandwidth over their dial-up modem or DSL line, and it takes one button press to delete the spam, it's not going to stop people from using email. But on a mobile device, spam becomes a much bigger problem - most people are paying for bandwidth, and even if you have a flat-rate plan (like I do with Fido), you're still paying with your time. GPRS is quite slow, and if getting a 30 KB HTML spam email is painful. The tools for deleting the messages aren't quite as fast as on the desktop either - and there's no Spamnet for my Pocket PC yet, so I'm very vulnerable to spam.
Will spam stop you from using your mobile device for wireless email?
While some panelists said current U.S. laws are inadequate for dealing with wireless spam, members of the cell phone industry said they're already taking steps to avoid the influx of spam that has saturated the wired Internet. Unlike the free-for-all Internet, wireless carriers are treating their networks as private property and are planning to kill off bulk text messages at gateways before they hit customer in-boxes."
I think this is a very real fear. Spam on the desktop is irritating, but considering most people don't pay for bandwidth over their dial-up modem or DSL line, and it takes one button press to delete the spam, it's not going to stop people from using email. But on a mobile device, spam becomes a much bigger problem - most people are paying for bandwidth, and even if you have a flat-rate plan (like I do with Fido), you're still paying with your time. GPRS is quite slow, and if getting a 30 KB HTML spam email is painful. The tools for deleting the messages aren't quite as fast as on the desktop either - and there's no Spamnet for my Pocket PC yet, so I'm very vulnerable to spam.
Will spam stop you from using your mobile device for wireless email?
