Senators Want Authority Over Mobile Spam

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Senators Want Authority Over Mobile Spam

Two U.S. senators—Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, and Bill Nelson, D-Fla—have introduced an update to the federal CAN-SPAM law to include mobile spam. Coined the m-SPAM Act, it would allow both the FCC and the FTC to go after spammers, which send out unwanted messages using SMS. “Among other things, the m-SPAM Act would explicitly bar marketers from sending text messages to any mobile number in the national Do-Not-Call list maintained by the FTC,” reports Internet News.

Apparently the number of spam text messages has increased by 38 percent from 2006 to 2007, to 1.1 billion spam messages according to Ferris Research, which put spam messages as “about one-third of 1 percent (0.3 percent) of the total messages received.”

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James Quintana Pearce Apr 7, 2009 1:50 PM ET

Posted In: Advertising, Legal, Regulatory

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Taj

I concur with Ricks comment totally.

Rick

The Government should pass rules regulations in regards to the use of the mobile email format and not all inclusive text messaging. For those companies that are in compliance with FCC, CTIA and MMA rules, regulations, best practices and the code of conduct, spamming is not an issue. When short codes are used to send and/or receive text messages, the end users can always opt-out by sending in STOP, END, CANCEL, QUIT or UNSUBSCRIBE to the short code and the system will now longer send text messages.

When the public gateways, cell carrier portals or the Microsoft SMS module are used to send messages, the end-users typically can not block or opt-out directly from their phones, whcih they can do from a short code.

Punish those that abuse, do not punish those that go to great ends to be compliant.