I’m sure you’ve probably received a number of SMS spam per week on your phone without you knowing how the spammers got your number. Did you know that there are nearly 800 million SMS spam messages sent across the Philippines monthly? That’s according to Cloudmark.
Cloudmark Inc. is a global company that specializes in threat protection for communication service providers. That means spam and scam protection across different platforms whether it’s from e-mail, social networking sites, or through SMS. They just revealed that they are entering the Filipino market to provide messaging security solutions for the country’s carrier market.
I’m sure our local telcos have their own spam prevention solution but obviously it’s not working. According to Cloudmark, telcos usually have a system in place that detects the amount of messages a number sends per day, and if it goes pass a certain limit, it will block the number or treat the messages sent as spam. What spammers do is find this limit (through a canary SIM) and send one less message so as not to be blocked by the telcos.
Cloudmark’s solution is more complex for scammers to get around with. Their technology offers intelligent and adaptive threat analysis to help identify fraudulent activity and grey route traffic, helping carriers maximize revenue and increase customer satisfaction by preventing the onslaught of unwanted and potentially harmful messages on personal devices.
Cloudmark’s General Manager for APAC, David Somerville, says Cloudmark recognizes the need to continue developing and expanding in the region due to population growth and the development of Asia Pacific as a technological hub.
“œWe are currently working with a number of tier one operators in APAC and continuing our committed expansion to the region.”
The 2012 Messaging Threat Report conducted by Cloudmark revealed that there were more than 350,000 unique unsolicited mobile spam variants in 2012, with the highest rate in December. It has also been noted that spammers have favorite category of attacks and frequently changing their messaging methods to avoid being detected. For Cloudmark’s latest research, visit www.cloudmark.com/research.