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International Issue:
Mobile spam ‘under control’, claims MDA
by Iain Morris
Mobile operators, it would seem, have an
arsenal of weapons at their disposal to fight
spam. And, according to an ITU survey carried
out last year, the anti-spam method most
frequently employed by mobile operators is
the suspension of commercial and interconnect
agreements (Figure 1).
But Mike Short, chairman of the Mobile
Data Association (MDA), believes that
the threat from spam has dropped considerably
over the past three years. The
drastic step of suspending interconnect
agreements is more often than not, he argues,
taken as a last resort.
According to Short, the reason why the
level of mobile spam has fallen from its
high point in 2003 (and even then he
puts it at only 0.0001 per cent of all SMS
sent in the UK) is primarily due to a tightening-
up of those interconnect agreements
in the first place. “A kind of self-discipline/
self-help group exists between
operators today,” he says.
Essentially, explains Short, there is
greater collaboration on an international
scale so that an operator channelling
spam to another international market
would quickly be alerted to the problem
by the operator at the receiving end.
Moreover, interconnect rates could be
hiked if an originator refused to stem the
flow of spam at its source.
As for other measures, Short believes
that filtering action at the network — as
opposed at the device level — is preferable
because of the huge number of
phones in circulation already that do not
incorporate the latest vendor solutions.
The Short Message Service Centres (SMSCs)
in use on networks today are quite
sophisticated store-and-forward platforms,
says Short, which can identify and investigate
text messages that are sent to a much
wider number range than normal before
they are forwarded to the customer.
In future, says Short, as the markets for
GPRS and 3G services start to mature,
the operators will need to be vigilant to
protect their consumers. In his opinion,
the world of ‘mobile internet’ presents
new challenges, similar to those seen in
Japan with i-mode. There, spam played
havoc on networks because of the pairing
of mobile phone numbers with email
addresses. But once new gateways and
controls were implemented the level of
spam reduced dramatically.
As well as using more sophisticated
platforms for filtering and blocking, Short
says that operators will need to iron out
agreements with third parties — such as
content providers and aggregators — so
as to balance the risks against the rewards
of doing business.
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