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VietNamNet Bridge – Since the lunar New Year, many people have become victims of mobile phone spam with sexual contents. This is not the first time mobile subscribers complaining with their service providers about spam.
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It was over 11 pm when Mrs. Duyen, HCM City, received a text message and was angry because it was a spam. The sender was unknown and the message was a push-type message, which was full of pornographic contents, attached with a strange link.
“I am so tired! Sometimes I received a text message at 11p.m. I thought it might be an urgent text but it turned out to be a junk message. It was so annoying. I don’t know when this stuff ends,” Duyen complains.
Ms. Mai, also in HCM City, says sometimes she received ten of junk messages with sexual content a day.
“Text messages with sexual content are very dangerous. They are sent not only to adults but also to children,” Ms. Huong, a communication officer in District 10, says.
Junk messages with sexual contents are also sent from normal numbers. According to customers, this phenomenon has been rampant since the lunar New Year, despite the issuance of Decree 77 on spam. The victims are clients of any mobile service providers.
Ms. Lan, Hanoi, who uses two simcards of MobiFone, says that previously, only one number was attacked by spam, but now both of them receive junk messages. “My phones ring all the time, annoying others in my office. But my colleagues have sympathy with me because they are also victims of messaging spam.”
Ms. Hong, Hanoi, says after a long time deleting junk messages one by one, now she saves time by keeping them in the inbox for a time then erasing them all at once.
Many annoyed customers have complained to their service providers but nothing changes.
An official of MobiFone says that in the last three days, MobiFone received a lot of complaints from customers. He just promises to send feedback in three to seven days after receiving the complaints. “Blocking call spam has been done but blocking text message spam is still a problem,” he admits.
A MobiFone’s representative says that the company has checked its system and implemented some more measures to protect clients from spam. Specifically, it has completely blocked junk messages sent from overseas servers while filtered and blocked texts from the local subscribers who send a lot of messages at the same time. The firm has also examined messages of content service providers (CPs).
“On March 12, MobiFone suspended 18 phone numbers of violated CPs,” the official says. He adds that technology changes very quickly so it is difficult for mobile service providers to control messaging spam.
VinaPhone states that it has completely handled the CPs that spread junk messages. “However, not only VinaPhone but also other mobile service providers do not have measures to thoroughly handle those who spread junk messages,” a VinaPhone’s official says.
The phone numbers that are used to spread junk messages are always registered with fake information or they are no longer used after that, he explains. In addition, there are a lot of messages sent from the Internet and foreign servers.
The Ministry of Information and Communications have recently fined four CPs totaling VND1.7 billion ($70,000) for spamming. It is said that the fine is quite heavy but it is still modest compared to the profits that CPs earn from sending junk messages.
S. Tung