SMS spammers are every bit as irritating as they are plentiful.
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.
