22 January 2004 03:21
Companies Send Spam Straight to Your Pocket
Need a penis extension? Reach into your pants and pull out your mobile phone, as companies in Russia are offering to
send spam straight to your cellphone.
E-mail offers for breast enlargements or mortgages don't surprise anyone anymore.
But few people are prepared for the flood of advertising that companies are promising to send to cellphones via the
Short Message System, or SMS.
A quick Internet search turns up dozens of web sites offering telephone spamming services. One such firm, Vzlyot
Rakety, offers to send unsolicited messages to 1,000 cellphone subscribers for 3,000 to 6,000 rubles ($100 to $200),
depending on which of the three major phone companies is targeted.
The price seems inordinately expensive when compared to the cost of spamming by e-mail, which costs 15,000 rubles for
1 million messages.
The price is justified because of the service's effectiveness, said Natalya, a Vzlyot Rakety sales manager who
did not give her last name.
"You will see sales go up by 40 percent to 50 percent," she said. Higher sales are the only proof a
customer has that the company provided the service.
Mobile companies are playing down the threat of spam filling up cellphone mailboxes. They say that the companies are
probably conning businesses into believing they have provided a service of which there can be no proof of delivery.
"We haven't had any problems yet," said Marina Belysheva, a Megafon spokeswoman. "I think these
people who have come out and said they can do this are tricksters."
Belysheva also said cellphone users have text recognition technology which allows them to filter out unwanted
messages.
Over four years of mobile phone use, this reporter has received only one unwanted solicitation via SMS -- last
month.
It is difficult to measure to what extent spammers may be bombarding unsuspecting cellphone users with text messages.
But in principle the technology required to do so is easily obtainable.
All an SMS spammer needs is a computer, a cellphone, a $20 cable, free shareware from the Internet, and a database of
mobile phone numbers available at the city's pirate CD markets.
The telephone is attached to the computer by cable, and the program instructs the phone to send a message to as many
numbers as desired. For spammers, the cheapest option would be Megafon's O'Lite plan, under which sending one
text message costs 1 cent.
.TX-..**********************************************
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