Japan isn’t an SMS centric culture like Europe. This is ironic when you consider that SMS was created in response to the use of the signaling channel (on which SMS travels) by teenage girls in Japan for silent “note” passing among friends. However, with the release of Shamail and camera phones, Japan became, instead, a mobile email culture. I recall reading in 2005 that 80% of all the emails traversing DoCoMo’s network were SPAM. That’s a shocking statistic. The company pledged to deploy systems to manage and control the abuse of SPAM on their network.

The site Grumbletext created a forum for individuals to share information in response to unsolicited SMS and SMS scams in the UK. You can expose a company sending SPAM or scams via SMS, warn others and even be instructed on how to bring an action in small claims court. Grumbletext is an oft referenced resource for its anecdotal data on SMS SPAM campaigns.

Verizon Wireless has brought lawsuits against a number of companies that have used its network to send SPAM. Using federal fraud and privacy laws, Verizon pursues both civil and criminal remedies to punish spammer companies in inside the US. Most recently, Verizon Wireless filed suit against I-VEST Global Corporation operating in Nevada. Symantec, the computer security and anti-spam company, discovered the court papers at Pacer, Public Access to Court Electronic Records.

Ollie Whitehouse, Symantec blogger in SMS SPAM - Thnx - CU in court shares some details from the filing as well as providing pointers to the documents. I-VEST attempted to send unsolicited messages via SMS to 12 million of Verizon’s subscribers offering the purchase of stocks and real estate. Whitehouse writes,

We now have an example of alleged SMS spam with some real statistics rather than the usual conjecture. We know SMS spam has been growing through the monitoring of such sites as Grumble Text [1] however we’ve never had true insight into the scale of a professional SMS spamming operation.

Verizon Wireless intends to use both technology and the law to protect it’s customers from wireless spam and punish the companies abusing the network, as stated by the company’s general counsel. If technology and the law were enough, we would have been rid of spammers long ago.

Enter web 2.0 and the machine is us.

Project Honey Pot filed a $1+ billion lawsuit against John Doe spammers on behalf of 20,000 users of its software which creates the world’s largest distributed network of spammer trapping honey pots. From the site,

Honey pots are used to tag e-mail addresses that are subsequently phished by e-mail harvesters. By tracking the messages that are sent to these addresses, a trail can be followed that links e-mail harvesters to senders of spam. Project Honey Pot is the world’s largest distributed network of spam-tracking honey pots.

Project Honey Pot is an initiative by Unspam, leaders in e-mail, fax, mobile phone and instant messenger do-not-contact registries. The project employs volunteers and currently tracks and identifies harvesters, dictionary attackers, and comment spammers. Project Honey Pot has engaged John Praed called the “Spamhunter General” having represented companies like AOL and Verizon in major anti-spam lawsuits to represent organization’s members in the largest anti-spam lawsuit in history.

Project Honey Pot isn’t in the SMS spammer tracking business yet, but $1 billion would buy allot of resources to expand into an area where the founding org already has business interests.

SPAM presists despite the best efforts of technologists and legal minds. As illustrated in the Verizon Wireless v. I-VEST Global Corporation case, a system and it’s infrastructure to package and route 12 million messages in a burst would require expensive bandwidth and equipment. So, why do spammers spend large sums of money on operations and legal defenses? They are paid very well by those who choose to pass along the cost of advertising their products and services to the consumers they target. And why would companies pay spammers huge fees? Quite simply put - it works. From junk mail in your home or business mailbox, to unsolicited offers in your email, to comments on your blog and even SMS to your phone, direct marketing, i.e., SPAM produces enough of a return and revenue that the costs of doing business are covered.

Consider the words of the first and highest profile commercial spammer on Usenet from almost 14 years ago. The Green Card Lawyers, Lawrence A. Canter and Martha S. Siegel tell us why they would do it again.

There were probably somewhere between 20,000 and 25,000 flames that we received but they were not from 20,000 to 25,000 people. There were individuals who sent us hundreds and thousands. There was one guy who sent us close to 1,000 a day. As far as the positive responses, we did get slightly over 1,000 paying clients out of it.

October 16, 1994 the New York Times featured Canter and Siegel and the business their spam campaign created. The rewards weren’t simply tied to an increase in their immigration law practice, but included a book and a list of new consulting clients.

Their action, called “spamming” in Internet slang, set off a five alarm outbreak of nasty electronic responses, accusing the Phoenix couple of violating the global network’s code of behavior and self-enforced ban on widespread advertising.
The episode forced a debate about commercialism and free speech on the global computer network, which is not governed by any single regulating body. It also earned the pair, who are married, $100,000 in new legal business.
Abandoning their law careers, Mr. Canter and Ms. Siegel formed a consulting company to help businesses and individuals market on the Internet and written a book that details the process. “How to Make a Fortune on the Information Superhighway”….

The creation of businesses to market to SMS and monetize SPAM is only possible, because as spammers will tell you - some people bite. A 2003 report, SPAM - The current state from Andrew Leung of Telus, a Canadian telco, presents the economics of spam. The article claims that spammers have lucrative careers on a response rate of about .005 %. That is, 50 people out of a million are sufficient numbers to justify annoying the other 999,950 recipients and fund the business.

There are numerous efforts to combat SPAM from technological, to legal and even people powered. Having found its way onto every messaging platform including, email, SMS, IM and blogs, SPAM continues to expand and flourish. So long as the economics of spam are reasonable and those 50 people continue to respond and purchase we, 999,950 other people, will have to endure SPAM. If you have ever responded to an SMS SPAM message, could you please stop doing that? You’re teaching spammers to continue, funding their campaigns and annoying allot of the rest of us in the process.

Oh! And, I like turtles.