TeddyK
on
I consider myself fortunate for a number of things in my life, but I also know I’m not that lucky all the time, either. And yet, in just the last two weeks, I’ve received no less than four text messages on two different smartphones telling me that I’ve won an iPhone with a link to the glorious prize. Spam has traditionally been a staple of unwanted email, but it seems text messages are catching up.
Spam texts used to be a bigger issue a few years ago when the big carriers were still charging their customers per message. Now, that all-in text messaging plans are the norm, it’s less an issue about money and more about simple annoyances. Spammers don’t care when the messages go out. There’s nothing worse than receiving a text in the middle of the night and your immediate thought is that someone might be in trouble, only to find out that it’s some bogus crap about winning an Apple product. It’s just unfortunate there’s no way to settle the score with whoever sent it.
So, aside from pointing out that I’ve gotten those spam texts (but not at 4 a.m., luckily), why am I even writing about this? Well, for one thing, we can probably expect an uptick of spam once the next iPhone is launched. And for another, spam texting is probably only going to get worse, generally.
In fact, some of them are getting pretty specific, too. I got one a couple months ago that specifically called me “Toronto’s Winner of the Day”. Anyone else get one of those from the city you live in? My guess is that the spammers are able to use your area code to tailor the spam to your location.
Canada has anti-spam legislation, but it’s not yet enforced, according to the website. Once they do enforce it, they can go after the spammers, though that would probably be difficult, since the spam originates in either the U.S. or another country.
At any rate, expect this to be a recurring issue if you have a smartphone. Have you noticed an increase in spam texting?
