AT&T, Bell Mobility, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless have all joined the GSMA’s SMS spam reporting system, which maintains a global clearinghouse of threats and lets phone users report spam. The GSMA, a worldwide mobile phone association that hosts, among other things, Mobile World Congress, has operated the Spam Reporting Service since February of last year. The service collects and breaks down spam reports, both analyzing them for potential trends and letting carriers pool efforts to find in-progress attacks and block them. For consumers, the system implements a universal short code (usually “7726,” which spells “SPAM”) for reporting texts, as well as an Android app that can submit details automatically.
Five major North American carriers join global SMS spam reporting service
AT&T, Bell Mobility, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless have all joined the GSMA’s SMS Spam Reporting Service, which maintains a global clearinghouse of threats and lets phone users report spam.
AT&T, Bell Mobility, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless have all joined the GSMA’s SMS Spam Reporting Service, which maintains a global clearinghouse of threats and lets phone users report spam.
is a senior tech and policy editor focused on online platforms and free expression. Adi has covered virtual and augmented reality, the history of computing, and more for The Verge since 2011.
While this system will hopefully give people more options when they see an unwanted text, the problems these carriers face aren’t particularly severe. According to the GSMA, North America has one of the lowest incidences of SMS spam in the world; indeed, mobile malware is probably a bigger issue, albeit one that carriers can do less to prevent. The service should launch today for subscribers of the five companies, although details don’t look to have been added to their sites.
Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.
