Have you ever been eagerly awaiting an important text message, when your mobile phone beeps, as you excitedly pick up your handset to read your text message you find out that it's a spam text! Needless to say it is very annoying.
Not only can spam messages be irritating, they can also be attacks designed to trick you in to sending personal information, or prompting you to call a premium rate number. These are known as 'phishing' attacks.
Research carried out by YouGov (commissioned by Cloudmark - a messaging security company) has revealed that operators are being blamed by consumers for the ever increasing amount of mobile spamming. The survey discovered that 44% of those questioned would consider leaving their mobile phone network due to the escalating spamming problem. And 65% who received one or more spam messages per month were currently thinking of ditching their operator.
One in ten who took the survey had been targeted by phishing attacks that encouraged them to reply with personal data, and 45% of people had received a spam message that encouraged them to call a premium rate number.
It was revealed that 18-24 year olds were most at risk of receiving spam messages, with three quarters of those surveyed confirming that they had received junk texts.
The simplest thing to do is to delete any junk messages, don't reply to them and don't call any telephone numbers that may be included in the message. If you are unsure if a message is genuine or not call the company direct to find out (find the telephone number from the phone book, remember don't call a number in the message!), the chances are if it is really important the company will call you, or contact you via letter or email.
