Korean SMS Spam Trap

The Korea Herald : New mobile spam trap system filters out unwanted messages

The Korea Information Security Agency is planning to implement a new SMS SPAM trap. Reading through the article there are references to black-list originator numbers and volume triggers.

Black List

There are a couple of interesting points from a technology perspective in looking at a black-list approach. First, this implies that a significant amount of SMS Spam is being sent from mobile phones or at least from spammers that are using a traditional long number as the point of origin. But when reading the article they quote,
"During a trial period in January, KISA found out that the total number of spam received from 1,000 mobile numbers reached 1,800. " - And if this means that there are only 1.8 messages per rogue number this implies that the threshold for sending SPAM is incredibly low and that the tolerance level is also set very low. Effectively, you only have to screw up once.

Secondly, it will be an interesting task to maintain such a black list. Establishing tight enough criteria to decide who goes on the list - and what it takes to come off the list will be very challenging.

Volume Triggers

In contrast to the low 1.8 messages per number limit above, the article goes on to say that they are targeting "spammers who send texts to over 100,00 mobile addresses at the same time."

And if it's not too techy for you...

Korea is largely CDMA

And what does that have to do with a SPAM trap? Simple. GSM based mobile networks deliver SMS messages using the same technology as call setup making it incredibly difficult to intercept every single message and run a filter on it without affecting the voice network. As CDMA has implemented SMS as an after thought -they have better control points where they can insert these type of filtering systems.

The point - this may work for Korea but don't look for a similar approach on Europe anytime soon...



Originally from: Textually.org