The recommended steps are the same whether you visit the carriers’ websites, consult the Federal Communications Commission, or read the New York Times. The bad news is that, in all likelihood, they won't do you any good. For those that have been targeted, the good news is that the major wireless carriers offer a litany of potential fixes. That won’t guarantee you immunity, since legitimate sites can be hacked for customers’ personal information, but it’s your best bet. Your surest defense is to avoid replying to any mobile spam and to hold off on typing in your cellphone number on websites you don’t fully trust. By the time you notice you never received your iPhone 5, the website will be gone, and your name, phone number, and credit card number will have entered the vast and lucrative underground market where such information is traded. A few clicks later, you’re asked to enter your credit card number so they can charge a small $8.99 shipping fee. It first asks you to confirm your email address, then requests your name, date of birth, phone number, and mailing address. Consider a text that invites you to “Test & keep unreleased iPhone5!” Follow the link and it will admit that some “testing and participation” is required before you claim your prize. Orchestrated by a sprawling network of mainly U.S.-based e-crooks and semi-legal websites, these swindles use confusing privacy notices and fine-print consent forms to lend a veneer of plausibility to attempts to separate you from your personal and financial information. The latest wave of text scams is a cut above your typical Nigerian bank fraud. Mobile-phone spam messages are often an invitation to be scammed at sites like this one Courtesy of Cloudmark. It’s the phishers who are making the switch. The volume of text spam remains comparatively small, because those spammers who are just trying to sell a product-Cialis, say, or fake Rolexes-have largely stuck to email, which remains the cheaper option. Spammers’ lists of numbers have been multiplying as they shift their focus from email to mobile phones to take advantage of cellphone companies’ weaker spam filters. “Now, I’d say most people have been exposed to it themselves.” If you haven’t, you will be soon. “Six months ago, when I would tell people I work for an anti-spam company and work on mobile spam, they’d all wonder, ‘What’s mobile spam?’ ” says Mike Reading, Cloudmark’s director of technology for the Americas. But even that figure doesn’t capture the biggest boom, which has come in just the past few months, according to Cloudmark, a San Francisco-based firm that provides messaging security for major wireless carriers. In 2009, Americans received some 2.2 billion text messages that they identified as spam, by the estimate of Richi Jennings, an independent market analyst.
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