Bulk SMS Mobile industry news

Mobile spoofing or SMS spoofing seems to be the latest kid on the block as far as invasion of privacy and criminal activities surrounding SMS are concerned.

Using web based SMS services users can send text messages to people they know without the recipient knowing that it was not sent from a mobile phone. So, naturally the criminals are onto this one as quick as a flash again.

"What is the danger in that" you would ask?
Well, receiving an emergency SMS from a loved one will most likely get all of us to jump in our cars and drive to the location they gave. This just opens the door for vehicle hi-jackers......

The cellular service providers have no control over this as there is no way to tell a spoofed (fake sms) from a ligitimate SMS sent to a mobile phone. The reason for being able to send a fake (spoofed) SMS, lies in the fact that some of these web based services offer dynamic sender ID as part of their solution in which case the user could use a mobile number as a sender ID - allowing the message to appear on the recipient's phone as a ligitimate message.

The spread of this practise seems to be in and around Asia, India and Africa.

So what should mobile phone users do?

Besides phoning the person from whom you received the SMS, there is not much you can do.

I think the biggest rule of thumb is always be suspicious of unknown numbers. Granted, it is rather difficult in the business world and easier for customers using their mobile phones for private use only.

There is a good side to SMS spoofing as well - law enforcement agencies could track illegal activities in this manner.

SMS warehouse Web SMS:
Using SMS warehouse web SMS spoofing might be a bit difficult as we do not offer dynamic sender ID. Each user is required to enter a sender ID in the NAME field of the registration. Unless SMS spoofers register a fake number, they would not be able to send spoof from this web site.

Normally these criminals will try to use free services and on this web site we only offer 10 free SMS for testing purposes. So, unless they pay for it, they will have a hard time sending more than 10 spoofed SMS from this web site.