Mobile phone spam

SMiShing involves tricking users into revealing confidential information and is a type of phishing through mobile phone spam.

[3] Jurisdictions with specific SMS spam regulation and fines include Australia,[4] the EU, and the United States.

[6] In a 2010 class action settlement of Satterfield v. Simon & Schuster, a case that reached the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, defendants agreed to pay $175 to each spam recipient.

[9] In the US, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has expanded Phone Spam regulations to cover also Voice Spam—mostly in form of prerecorded telemarketing calls—commonly known as robocalls;[10] victims can file a complaint with the FCC.

[13] In 2019, senators John Thune, Roger Wicker and Ed Markey introduced a new proposal titled the Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence Act (TRACED) to deter criminal robocall violations and improve enforcement [14] which passed the Senate on May 22, 2019[15] and was signed into law by President Trump in December 2019.

[16] The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) released an order in Aug, 2004 that reiterated that SMS spam messages to cellphones are illegal under the existing Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA).

Each such unsolicited message received without permission entitles the recipient to take the sender to small claims court and collect a minimum of $1 for each violation.

[20] Fighting SMS spam is complicated by several factors, including the lower rate of SMS spam (compared to more abused services such as Internet email), which has allowed many users and service providers to ignore the issue, and the limited availability of mobile phone spam-filtering software.

The Open Mobile Alliance completed its "SpamRep"[26] standard which provides a standardized client-server interface suited for user reporting of mobile email, SMS, MMS and IM spam using a 'This-Is-Spam' button or menu item, as users of wired email systems are now doing.

One of the biggest sources of SMS spam is number harvesting carried out by Internet sites offering "free" ring tone downloads.

most cell phone providers offer the option of completely disabling all text messaging services on a user's account.

[30] Phone users in the United Kingdom can use the Information Commissioner's complaints page and can take action against the sender through the small claims court.

In October 2014, a network of solicitors in the UK called PIE (Personal Injury Expert) Lawyers launched a campaign on social media to rid their industry of text message spam.

The campaign focused on the fact that, under UK law, it is illegal for a solicitor to obtain business by unsolicited direct contact with potential personal injury clients.