I just got a text message on my cell phone informing me that a mister so and so bought and sold houses in my area for cash. Fucking text message spam Unfuckingbelievable. The kicker is, I don’t even have text messaging on my phone! I can recieve text messages (I know that because Sprint sent me one when I was late with my bill), but I can’t send them because I haven’t gotten around to changing my plan. But this is the first spam I’ve gotten. Good god, have the floodgates opened? Will I be recieving dozens of daily offers to extend my penis length? Will the riches of Nigera be mine for the taking, pending a small nominal fee? Why shouldn’t I just drown myself now?
Don’t you get charged for text messages too? like $.10 per? If that starts happeneing to me, by gawd, there will be hell to pay.
Yes, be careful, you can be charged for receiving spam texts. It cost me about £50 over three months before I realised what was happening.
(I didn’t have an itemised phone bill, and then when I got one it lumped all the text charges in together - and the ‘help’ staff didn’t help at all, while charging me £1.80pm to call them).
My AT&T cellphone gets spammed like mad, but since it is provided by my employer, I care not. Sprint has been spam-free, so far.
I believe that many cell plans in America include recieving text messages for free; It’s sending them that runs up the bill.
I get charged $0.10 for each text message I send and receive, so I would be extremely pissed off if I got junk mail on my phone the way I get junk mail on my computer.
I get spammed by my phone company every week or so. Australian mobile phones can all receive SMS for free (we’re also not charged for receiving calls), but it still shits me – it’s kinda disappointing to reach for one’s phone to find it’s an advertisement, not a friend messaging!
It’s especially disappointing when the second text message you’ve ever recieved is spam!
It’s especially disappointing when the second text message you’ve ever recieved is spam!
Well, if you people are the sort who insist on yapping on your cellphones on public transit or in restaurants, consider this divine retribution. 
If you’re not, you have my sympathy.
I see a lot of calls about this. For some reason it doesn’t make the customers any happier when we explain that we can stop them from getting the spam by simply removing their ability to receive any text messages.
So how do the spamers get your phone number? I have Sprint and have yet to receive any spam. Although the only people I ever text messaged were girls I’ve dated.
Do people use text messaging like forwarding an e-mail? Are cell phone employees selling this info?
Spam on mobiles is far easier to trace than email. So companies are always getting fined in the UK for doing it. The normal trick is to try and dupe the recipient into phoning back on a premier rate phone number.
T-Mobile has a page at their website that allows you to set filters on your mobile. Perhaps Sprint does too???
I was getting viagra spam 
Oh good lord how I hate this!!! About ten messages a day of spam I receive. I am so sick of the damned thing buzzing every few minutes with a new text message telling me about some great deal on penis enlarging pills!!!
I never get spam. This is because I haven’t signed up my mobile number with ANYTHING! Not even Vodafone when they said they would give £7.50 of free calls if I did so. With my last Vodofone, phone I only signed up with Vodafone and I got texts from some dating agency thing that Vodafone must have sold my number too. Grrrr.
Never ever sign up for any text service as not only will they charge you for texts, but they will sell your number on too.
For a couple of weeks, I was getting all sorts of spamerrific e-mail on my cell phone. Fortunately, DoCoMo (NTT, Japan) phones have some nice blocking/filtering features. I started out by blocking each address that I was getting spam from; after the number of addresses got to be over 10 or so, I switched to only accepting text messages from my friends. Finally, I just changed the e-mail address of my phone, to something long and complicated, so the spammers couldn’t guess it.
Cell phone technology seems to be insanely advanced in Japan…
I haven’t heard of this problem in Canada yet nor have I ever received cell spam. I tend to give out my cell as my main contact number because, well, working for the cell phone company gives me a few perks including the ability to trace every call.
I dont think it’s possible to “spoof” text messages yet but for my company it’s possible to send messages from the internet and so it’s almost untraceable (actually, we log IPs when sending messages so I can trace people that way).
We don’t charge for received messages so it at least there’s that.
I have to wonder if this might not be the breaking point for some kind of action against the spammers. To the best of my knowlege there are two U.S. carriers who offer free incoming text messaging. That leaves a whole lot of people with genuine easily proven damages should spamming ever become a tort. If nothing else, the spammers have taught us that every little bit counts.
It’s not often that I wish life would more closely resemble a law school exam, but wouldn’t this be a good way for that to happen?