It really comes as no surprise that spammers have entered the mobile text messaging field. With spammers always looking for ways to increase their range of prey, text messaging is a ripe area that is easy to crack. Especially since cell phones lack the usual email protection or spam filters that are common among computers.

Outside of the United States, spamming via text messaging is an even bigger problem. Here in the U.S. it is estimated that 5 percent of text messages are related to spam. However in India, 30 percent of text messages can be attributed to spam. China leads the pack with an estimated 50 percent of spammed text messages.

Hugh McCartney, CEO of Cloudmark, a San Francisco based antispam software provider, has made a plea to Congress and the Justice Department to step in with regulation regarding text message spam. However, legislators deduced that regulation was not the answer and would not be likely to solve the issue. Wireless companies themselves would need to beef up their protection from this type of spam.

One of the issues of text message spamming is the fact that it is much easier for a spammer to get a random “hit” on a cell phone number than an e-mail address. An e-mail address has an exclusive and unique series of numbers, letters and characters with varying lengths. A mobile number, on the other hand, is a standard set of 10 numbers. The only saving grace here possibly, is the fact that wireless carriers have a much tighter control on what will pass through on their networks.

Attack combinations called blended smishing are finding their victims via their cell phones. These combo attacks blend text messages with phone numbers and web links. It has been reported that some of these attacks transmit a text message to a recipient encouraging them to click on an internet link or to place a call to a displayed phone number. Of course, the purpose of the whole process is to obtain more information from the cell phone user.

Spam is fast becoming more than just an annoyance. One must always use common sense when opening any e-mail from an unknown source. Even if it comes via your cell phone and is coded in cute abbreviations.