Didn’t see that one coming. Now that proxy dialers exist on the internet, it’s no surprise that some internet to SMS services exist now. The sad thing is they are being abused at the expense of the message recipient.

Back on the 24th of January, a spammer by the name of Giovanni@instantmash.com sent a text message to my cellphone advertising getwellwontyoust.com. Usually e-mail spam’s only cost is time and bandwidth, in which for the end user bandwidth is usually unlimited. For SMS, the cost is 50 cents per a message received, plus an additional 50 cents for connection (with Verizon as SMS is not part of my plan as I don’t text people). Luckily, I believe Verizon will be removing the charges as it was a Spam, otherwise I’ll use the WHOIS information for both the spammed address and the sender and send them a bill.

A quick Google search reveals that istantmash.com has been suspended and that getwellwontyoust.com is a sex spam site. Looks like the latter is registered to a one Natalie Wood, of Sacramento California. Natale Wood is most likely as pseudo name as the fax number is invalid (area code 555) and I have doubts on the legitimacy of the provide phone number of (916) 742-3301. Under federal law and a precedent set in the class action lawsuit Shen v. Distributive Networks LLC. No. 06 C 4403 the offender may owe me and any one else he or she SMS spammed up to 150USD in damages.

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]