MMW learned Monday that iconectiv is behind a new push to safeguard brand reputations by slashing their association with spam.

As consumers increasingly rely upon text messaging for authentic engagement with organizations to conduct a variety of everyday tasks, the last thing they want or need are irrelevant, misdirected texts they did not ask to receive, or worse, their medical, financial and other personal data sent to someone else’s mobile phone.

iconectiv, a partner of the global communications industry connecting more than two billion people every day, have just announced iconectiv Right Party Verification for Messaging. It’s a new service for mobile marketers, messaging aggregators and contact centers to deliver targeted communications, less unwanted spam and happier customers.

“The service was developed in response to evolving Federal Communication Commission (FCC) rules under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) that now dictate companies must have permission not just to send marketing messages to a mobile number but also to have explicit consent to contact the owner of that number,” the company explains, noting how failure to comply can lead to large fines for offending companies. With some 45 million U.S mobile numbers typically reassigned every year, just one communication to a number with a new owner could trigger a fine that is currently set at a minimum $500 per unsolicited contact – increasing to $1,500 per contact for offenses deemed to be deliberate.

The numbers can quickly add up. Recent TCPA enforcement has seen many established and well-known brands endure record-setting legal penalties and multi-million dollar class-action lawsuits.

So how can this new service help?

Part of the iconectiv Messaging Solution “builds on the company’s long history in the mobile numbering space, particularly the transfer of numbers from one service provider to another.”

We’re told that with research showing that around 97 percent of messages are opened within three minutes, protecting the integrity of text messaging outreach is vital to today’s mobile marketing efforts.

“Right Party Verification for Messaging means companies can have renewed confidence in one of the most popular forms of customer engagement,” said Scott Puopolo, Executive Vice President of Information Solutions at iconectiv. “When managed correctly, text messaging is a powerful tool that delivers the right message into the hands of the right people. Handled badly, it can alienate customers, damage brand integrity, and lead to costly fines.”

To check out what iconectiv can do for you and for your reputation, check out the company’s official website here.

The post New Messaging Solution Helps Companies Avoid Spamming appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

SpamSentry is an adaptive, machine-learning application that stops fraudulent and unwanted calls before they reach a company’s sale team and prevents spam call data from appearing in the analytics that marketers use to measure the performance of mobile marketing campaigns.

The rise of mobile marketing has caused a correlated rise in the number of consumers connecting with brands via mobile click-to-call. To measure its effectiveness, marketers use unique phone numbers to track and analyze inbound phone calls generated by mobile searches, ad, and websites. However, spammers pollute the data and can take multiple forms. DialogTech’s early adopters are seeing 26% of their calls flagged and blocked as unwanted spam.

DialogTech’s SpamSentry platform has successfully blocked millions of spam calls and has achieved a 99.4% efficiency rate. SpamSentry does not require third-party integrations or partnerships with other vendors to operate.

• Key features include:
  • Recurring Neural Network – Industry-leading functionality that allows DialogTech’s application to self-identify spam calls resembling those that have previously been identified and block those calls from reaching a business.
  • Adaptable to New Spam – As new types of spam are discovered, DialogTech can teach SpamSentry to identify and block them.
  • Keypress Technology – Once spam has been identified, an interactive voice response (IVR) prompt is triggered, which requires a keypress from the caller before connecting the call. This ensures spam calls are blocked, but any legit caller is still connected with the business.

Available today, this new feature is free of charge to all DialogTech customers as part of the Voice360 platform.

The post DialogTech Launches SpamSentry for Businesses to Block Spam Calls appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The company recently said that less than 0.1 percent of email in the average Gmail inbox is spam, while wanted mail in spam folders is under 0.05 percent.

“According to Google, it’s the result of using its artificial neural network to sift through billions of incoming emails to weed out unwanted messages and phishing attacks,” according to ZDNet.

Just consider this: Were Google not doing everything it could to weed out spam, Gmail would likely be an unusable mess.

“According to security firm Kaspersky, 59.2 percent of all email it filtered in the first quarter of 2015 was spam, with its senders jumping on newly-released domains, such as .work and .science, to sneak past spam filters and deliver advertisements or malware,” says ZDNet.

Reportedly, Google been using machine learning to improve its spam filter, relying on its 900 million users to flag up unwanted messages through the services “report spam” and “not spam” buttons.

“However, as it noted in a blog post today, users still occasionally have to click the “not spam” button, which essentially meant that they had to wade through their spam folder to find an email that was wanted, but flagged as spam — for example, a monthly statement alert from the bank,” noted ZDNet.

Google is said to be releasing a new system called Gmail Postmaster Tools. This will allow those companies that send email in bulk to analyze data on delivery errors, spam reports, and reputation.

The post Is Google’s Better at Catching (and Ditching) Spam Gmail? Looks Like It appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The announcement comes just as FCC members are considering whether tougher robocall services are a good idea.

YouMail is an app for both Apple and Android-based smartphones. It allows users to better manage incoming phone calls and boasts a host of features that improve privacy and productivity.

“The service includes a proprietary technology called Smart Blocking that detects robocalls — including those generated by spoofing systems, and tricks them into thinking that the user’s number has been disconnected, so calls stop coming in,” explains the company. “Users simply ignore calls, and YouMail does the hard job of deciding whether it’s a robocall or spam call and plays the caller an out of service message so that the robocaller won’t keep calling.”

It’s designed to combat the increasing numbers of robocalls that have made their way to people’s cell phones.

“Roughly one in six phone numbers calling the average consumer is a robocall, and there are more than 80 million scam or fraudulent calls made each month alone,” said Alex Quilici, founder and CEO of YouMail, Inc.

Quilici says the “robocall epidemic” wastes an estimated 20 million hours a year and costs American businesses about a half billion dollars annually.

“YouMail has blocked tens of millions of calls for our users and prevented far more robocalls from ever calling them in the first place,” he concludes. “All our users have to do is ignore phone numbers they don’t recognize and we do the rest.”

The post Fighting Robocalls: New ‘Smart Blocking’ Tracks and Blocks Spam Calls appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The answers to those questions may prove critical when Minnesota jurists consider a lawsuit in Minnesota lobbed at the AMC theater chain.

Andria Addison has alleged in a complaint just filed that AMC violated a federal text spam law. Addison is seeking class action status on the case.

“As part of their effort to promote business, defendants engaged in an especially aggressive and deleterious form of marketing: the transmission of unauthorized advertisements, in the form of ‘text message’ calls to the cellular telephones of consumers throughout the nation,” states the complaint, as reported by MediaPost.

Addison was upset when the chain sent her an unsolicited coupon via text in late April. The phone message may have been sent to all consumers enrolled in AMC’s “stubs” program. Addison admits she enrolled in “stubs” in 2012, but says she allowed her membership to lapse within a year.

“Her lawsuit alleges that transmitting the message violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, which prohibits companies from using automated dialers to send text ads to consumers without their written permission,” notes MediaPost. “Addison also accuses the Leawood, Kansas-based theater chain of violating the anti-spam law with a mobile marketing campaign that involved offering consumers incentives — like a $1 soda coupon — in exchange for their cell phone numbers.”

SMS efforts have been under fire in recent years. Most firms say they do not rely on automated dialers, but work from generated lists of consumers who have agreed to receive notifications of various sorts.

The post Not All Popcorn and Skittles in Theater Biz: AMC Chain Accused of Text Spam Violations appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The latest research from AdaptiveMobile shows an alarming rate of spam targeting the hugely popular mobile messaging platform, particularly across Europe and India.

In effect, the spam explosion comes as the latest evidence of spammers moving away from SMS to concentrate on OTT (Over-The-Top) messaging platforms.

“The total scale of these individual spam attacks over WhatsApp is hard to tell, but if anything, it does seem clear that WhatsApp is joining the ranks of messaging systems which now have a functioning and active spam ecosystem, and the contributors to this spam are being affected by and coming from other messaging systems,” the report, highlighted by ThreatPost, reads.

Unfortunately, things have gotten so bad in India, for example, that WhatsApp is said to be “overrun” with spam there. And while the problem may get worse (in the short term) before getting better in the long run, WhatsApp is by no means taking this matter lightly.

With its worldwide popularity surging, WhatsApp recently announced end-to-end encryption for its Android app, a reality made possible by the November 2014 coupling of WhatsApp with Whisper Systems, a “secure text and mobile OS vendor.”

Quoted by ThreatPost, Open Whisper Systems says: “WhatsApp runs on an incredible number of mobile platforms, so full deployment will be an incremental process as we add TextSecure protocol support into each WhatsApp client platform. We have a ways to go until all mobile platforms are fully supported, but we are moving quickly towards a world where all WhatsApp users will get end-to-end encryption by default.”

The post What’s Up? Mobile Spam on WhatsApp appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The carrier, we’re happy to report, has managed to identify the source of the problem and stop it in its tracks.

The problem seemed to rear its ugly head towards the end of last month, and over the past couple of weeks. There are several entries on T-Mobile support pages explaining the issue, with multiple commenters suffering. If you have been receiving more Spam recently, be assured, you are not the only one.

Over the weekend, Tmo News shared a statement from T-Mobile that has since put many more minds at ease.

“Our teams have now identified and blocked the sources of the unwanted text messages,” the statement reads. ” We apologize to any customers who may have been inconvenienced.”

So what was the underlying issue? According to the same report, the majority of spam messages may have been little more than just a “miscommunication between T-Mobile’s SMS/Email gateway.” In short, there was an issue with tmomail.com — an issue that has been resolved.

The post T-Mobile Topples Recent SMS Spam Distribution appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

As a result, it should come as no surprise that “resistance to spam and irrelevant messages are two reasons why mobile consumers fail to engage with mobile travel ads,” according to the researchers behind a new study.

The study in question, carried out by mobile research firm On Device for mobile marketing company MobPartner, is based on a survey of 1,000 mobile users in August.

Mobile users who do travel research and planning — whether on mobile or laptop — want to experience trust and relevancy.

“Some 38 percent of respondents who had not yet engaged with a mobile ad related to travel, were reluctant to do so because they were worried about spam, according to the study, while 33 percent said such ads were irrelevant to them,” noted the report summary.

Trusted brands fared best. Fully 32 percent of surveyed mobile users indicated they are willing to click on a mobile travel ad if it came from a trusted brand. About 25 percent of those who had responded to an ad said they subsequently made a vacation-related purchase.

“Trusted brands, good offers and relevance are the biggest drivers for engagement with mobile ads related to travel,” says Alexandra Travlos, client service analyst at On Device Research in charge of the study.

The most viewed? Travel ads that are mobile video ads 33 percent).  And 32 percent said they had responded to an ad within a mobile game or application. Traditional banner ads garnered 30 percent.

“Once initial barriers are overcome and trust is established, users appear eager to make use of travel-related ads to get information and even book travel,” says Djamel Agaoua , CEO of MobPartner. “This speaks to the need for offering truly helpful and relevant travel ads.”

Another interesting insight from the study is that, even though smartphones were cited as the top device for travel research, most people still prefer to do early research such as planning and booking on a laptop. Why? Reasons included a greater sense of security, greater ease of comparison, ability to print out information, and the fact that many travel related companies have not optimized their mobile websites.

The post Mobile Users Want Travel Trust, Ignore Spammy Ads and Irrelevant Pitches appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

And Jared Reitzin, the CEO of mobileStorm, is fed up with it.

“Anyone else get super annoying SMS spam trying to sell sunglasses?” Reitzin asks in a recent post to the Digital Marketing Blog, the official blog of mobileStorm.

Reitzin, in fact, wants to send those spam messages to a place where the sun doesn’t shine.

“Seems like this message comes once or twice a month. They use emoticons to turn an SMS message into something that resembles an email,” Reitzin writes. “They also do not send this as an SMS message via the SMPP protocol but rather they send it via SMTP, which is the email protocol. They know they can text people by emailing to yourphonenumber@attwireless.com (or whatever domain your carrier is using). They have a randomizer that spits out message after message, changing the number one digit at a time. So if your last 4 digits are 2331, they try same area code and prefix, then change it to 2332, 2333, 2334 and so on.”

Reitzin notes that — unlike spam email, which is distressing but costs you nothing but the time it takes to hit the delete key — text messages like this can cost real money.

Reitzin’s advice?

“First off never respond directly to a phone number where you believe the spam text originated,” he explains. “Responding alerts the spammer that your number is genuine.”

Reitzin then gives specific instructions on what to do next (it’s AT&T specific, but it applies to other carriers, too).

Click here to read it, bookmark it, and share it for the good of everyone who has been plagued by the scourge of SMS spam.

The post mobileStorm Boss Explains How to Get Rid of SMS Spammers appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

Those laws specifically prohibit the use of auto dialers to send SMS messages without a recipient’s consent, but Philadelphia resident Bill Dominquez says that he indeed received those messages, to the tune of approximately 5000 in a five-month period. Dominquez wants the lawsuit to continue but, not surprisingly, Yahoo is asking for the court to uphold the decision to dismiss it.

Yahoo argues that there SMS system doesn’t rely on automated dialers but, instead “Messages sent through the email SMS service were not sent randomly, and bulk or to sequential numbers – only to specific phone numbers manually inputted by individual Yahoo users.”

The lawsuit filed by Dominquez argues that this is impossible, saying that he received nearly 5000 SMS messages and doesn’t even have a Yahoo email address. He started receiving the SMS messages after he purchased a used T-Mobile cell phone but didn’t change the number that was on that cell phone to a new number.

In recent court papers that they filed (and shared by MediaPost), T-Mobile argued that “Rather than simply asking his carrier to assign him a new number, Dominguez filed a complaint seeking to recover … statutory damages against Yahoo for allegedly violating the TCPA.”

Confusing matters is the fact that, even though Judge Michael Baylson agreed with Yahoo, another, different judge presiding over a separate lawsuit in California ruled against the company.

The lawsuit is ongoing and, as you might imagine, many businesses who engage in SMS text message advertising are keen on seeing its eventual outcome.

The post Yahoo (Surprise) Opposes Revival of Spam Lawsuit by Miffed Consumer appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.