WAP push (cell phone) spam

[rconner]

I know next to nothing about this stuff, as I grew up in the last generation in which telephones were used only for talking. However, I've gotten a trickle of WAP push spams, mostly from an outfit called wappush.net (which does not have a sensible home page).

Usually they are selling crap, like ringtones. They do not have a sensible home page for their website, which is a pretty big clue.

The messages usually include instructions for opt-out, but as I am not a complete fool, I do not use them.

I don't know the ground rules here; can a WAP spamer just send text to any phone number he can dream up? Does he have to go through some sort of vetting with the cell provider to do this? If I wanted to complain about this, how would I go about it in an effective fashion?

I do not "text," and would be perfectly happy to block all incoming and outgoing WAP text messages. Seems to me that I ought to be able to do this somehow, either on my phone, or else at my provider's (AT&T's) website, does anyone know anything about this?

-- rick

[agsteele]

...can a WAP spamer just send text to any phone number he can dream up? Does he have to go through some sort of vetting with the cell provider to do this? If I wanted to complain about this, how would I go about it in an effective fashion?

I cannot comment about the situation in the USA (although it is not legal in the EU and there are governmental agencies that will assist). Basically a text/WAP spammer can send to any phone number they can guess or discover. If it is a WAP push spam (as opposed to simple SMS message) then many phones (but not all) have a setting to block such messages.

I would imagine your cell phone service would be the folk to help.

Andrew

[rconner]

Basically a text/WAP spammer can send to any phone number they can guess or discover. If it is a WAP push spam (as opposed to simple SMS message) then many phones (but not all) have a setting to block such messages.

I would imagine your cell phone service would be the folk to help.

Thanks, Andrew. With a bit more research I figure that this probably is simple SMS spam, as opposed to WAP.

Oddly I cannot uncover much info on this wappush.net outfit, except that they sell ringtones using the old "Vote for your favorite American Idol" gambit. Their domain is registered to a party here in Washington D.C., and they have a neutral reputation on SiteAdvisor & Senderbase (neither of which might reflect SMS activity vs. SMTP activity). Not much on Google about them insofar as spam is concerned.

I went to my AT&T account on the web to see whether I could turn off texting altogether, but found that I didn't have it turned on in the first place. Looks like I'm going to have to talk to a human at AT&T to get anywhere.

-- rick