Security news24 January 2007
Couple sued for sending 5 million spam cell phone messages Illinois Attorney General files suit against alleged SMS spammers
Spam on mobile phones is becoming a growing problem.
Experts at SophosLabs™, Sophos's global network of virus, spyware and spam analysis centers, have warned of the rising nuisance of spam sent to mobile phones as two people from Florida have been charged with flooding cell phones with spam messages advertising time shares.
Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan has filed a suit against Neela Pundit and Charles Rossop for sending 5 million unsolicited text messages to cell phone owners across the country.
More than 200 consumers complained in Illinois alone after receiving the advertisements in October and November 2006 which read:
and encouraged recipients to visit two internet websites.
"Cell phone spam isn't just a nuisance, it can potentially hit you in the pocket too. Often mobile spam messages may tell you just to call back a certain number, only for the recipient to find they are unwittingly making a premium rate call," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos. "Although it's a long way to go before SMS text spam is anything like as big a problem as regular email spam, we are hearing more reports of cell phone users being targeted. Users should report SMS abuse to their phone network providers and think carefully before acting upon unsolicited text messages."
This week Sophos published its annual Security Threat Report, which detailed the latest developments in the techniques used by spammers to try and get their marketing messages in front of internet users.
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More than 100 million users in 150 countries rely on Sophos as the best protection against complex threats and data loss. Sophos is committed to providing security and data protection solutions that are simple to manage, deploy and use and that deliver the industry's lowest total cost of ownership. Sophos offers award-winning encryption, endpoint security, web, email, and network access control solutions backed by SophosLabs - a global network of threat intelligence centers. With more than two decades of experience, Sophos is regarded as a leader in security and data protection by top analyst firms and has received many industry awards.
Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.
