ContentI awoke this morning to see numerous emails in my personal inbox reading:
To: dewitt@gmail.com
From: nnnnnnnnnn@vtext.com
Subject: Stop texting me!
Now obviously I’m not spam texting anyone. Not via the phone, not via email. But Verizon runs an email-to-SMS gateway at text.vzw.com that allows anyone to send an email to nnnnnnnnnn@vtext.com, where nnnnnnnnnn is a mobile number. It simply forwards the subject line of an email to a mobile number over SMS.
Arguably a useful service, but it is absolutely insane to run it without any form of verification or spam protection.
But because of this, spammers are able to send out tens of thousands of spam text messages with forged From headers and everyone who receives them (perhaps at a cost of $0.10 or more charged to the recipient!) and the blame is redirected on to someone else.
Verizon, please look into implementing the Sender Policy Framework on your email to SMS service. The major email providers support it now, you should use it. You’re hurting your customers otherwise and making the problem worse.
This blog post suggests that many, many people are being spammed, and the spam points people to the man555.com domain.
Update: They’re hitting T-Mobile’s email-to-sms gatesways as well.
If you find this post searching for man555.com or dewitt@gmail.com please know that my heart goes out to you. Spam sucks, SMS spam sucks worse, and I wish there was something I could do to help. Just know that I have nothing to do with this.
December 11th, 2007 at 10:20 pm
Hey, I found this while searching for man555.com because I had the exact same thing. I found out also that the FCC is less than pleased about this kind of thing. You can file a complaint online.
This site explains it: http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/canspam.html
Then go here: http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/complaints.html Under “step 1″ click “Telemarketing, Junk Fax and Email messaging to wireless device” click “form 1088″ Fill out your info and select “Wireless communications device” Then fill out as much of the rest as you can. It only took me a few minutes. I hope they nail these buggers to the wall. Good luck!
Melli
December 31st, 2007 at 10:50 am
[...] Clinton ‘97 claims that he has nothing to do with a recent outbreak of text-spam. I awoke this morning to see numerous emails in my personal [...]