Text-Message Spam Continues to Grow Around the World
According to the Observer, mobile phone owners in the U.K. are battling the latest spam scourge to sweep across the globe: SMS spam. Though not as pervasive as the e-mail variety, spam text messages usually attempt to lure people into signing up for expensive services that offer adult materials or promise cash settlements from accidents. The problem has been pervasive for over a year in places like China, and it's recently become a big enough problem in the States that the U.S. Senate last month proposed legislation to ban text-message spam.
Unfortunately, text-message spam doesn't stop unless the recipient actively opts out of future correspondence, which means replying to the original spam text (something that can cost around $0.15 per message if you don't have a texting plan). For those receiving the messages, however, there are avenues of recourse. The New York Times recently explained how to block such texts through your mobile carrier (usually something as simple as checking a few boxes online). If you're one of our British readers, you can file a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), which regulates electronic data privacy. The U.K.'s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) will meanwhile handle complaints of misleading or false advertising.
Other than filing complaints with the proper authorities, the best course of action is to ignore the spam texts. After all, there is no guarantee that requesting your removal from a text-messaging list will work. In fact, the misleading nature of the texts may lead you to believe you're opting out when you're actually signing up for unwanted, expensive services. [From: Observer, via Textually.org]
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