I received my first SMS Spam last week. I called AT&T about it and they told me to reply with the message “STOP”. Based on what I know about email spam this sounds like a really bad idea. After all, wouldn’t replying to the sender inform them that their message made it to a live user and prompt them to send more spam or sell off my SMS address? Needless to say I disregarded this advice.
This made me consider the fact that AT&T benefits financially from SMS spam. I was told by AT&T that even if I don’t want the message or know the sender I am charged 10 cents for the message. Now they tell me to reply with STOP which costs me another 10 cents. Now if the STOP message does result in more SMS spam I am charged for each additional SMS spam message I receive. All of these 10 cent charges may add up to a big cost to me and a big gain to AT&T. Although this is a real negative outlook, I have to wonder if AT&T would actually spend money to stop SMS spam if it is making them money.
My next request was for them to turn off my SMS. However, when they did this it disabled full Internet access and I could only access AT&T?s limited MediaNet content. Surprisingly my Exchange ActiveSync connection still worked. However, I need full access so I had them add SMS back.
Although I was never able to find a way to block SMS from another phone I did find a way to block SMS messages from mail servers which use this format: MOBILENUMBER@txt.att.net. AT&T users can go to this website: http://mymessages.wireless.att.com/ and register. Once registered, you can block messages from mail servers. I tested it and it works great. I was surprised that, after 2 hours on the phone with AT&T, no one told me about this feature. I found it doing Google searches. Sadly, this supports my negative outlook that AT&T does not want to stop SMS spam because it makes them money.
Do you think replying ?STOP? would help or hurt the situation?
Does anyone else have any SMS Spam stories or information to share?
