Mobile phone spam is a type of advertising that takes advantage of the text messaging service on your cell phone. As the trend text messaging has grown, advertisers have begun to realize there is yet another way to hassle us with more unwanted advertising.
As the frequency of text messaging has increased, so has the number of spam text messages. This is very annoying for most of us, since unlike email, it is nearly impossible to delete the message without reading it. Also for those of us that have a limited text service, these texts are costing us money. We are having to pay for the advertising the spammer sends us!
One of the largest originators of text spam is “number harvesting”. This is accomplished by the offer of “free” ring tone downloads. Users must provide their cell number in order to receive the download. This underhanded tactic is unfortunately quite legal, which means that we can now be sent frequent advertisements via our cell phone.