Unwanted SMS messages millions of people in Saudi Arabia receive on their mobile phones are about to be a thing of the past. SMS spam, which is the GSM version of spam email, has been an inconvenient aspect of the convenience of mobile phones for many people. Internet websites from which these messages are spewed by the billions onto people's handsets will be no more, after the shutting down of many of these websites. Countless websites buy SMS services from GSM providers, while the latter opens access to the concerned sites, letting people spam others with SMS messages that could contain just about anything, from love letters to sales promotions to nuggets of Islamic knowledge. Most of the time, those on the receiving end of the daily avalanche of spam never know who it is that is clogging their phone memory chips. “These websites are causing so much trouble for us,” said a source at Saudi Telecom (STC), who wished to remain anonymous. “We have complained to the Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC) and asked them to shut down these websites, because they are the main sources of spam SMS,” “The service is misused by some of the service providers, and after many of our subscribers complained about it, we asserted that it had to be stopped.” He added that SMS messages, as well as some of these websites, can be used to defraud mobile users. The simplest scam is to have someone else pay your phone bill, thinking that he's paying his own. “In one of the scams, a subscriber received a notification SMS – ostensibly from Aljawal, but with no sender's number – telling him his bill had been issued,” said the source. “Usually such messages (sent by Aljawal) contain the account number of your mobile, so you can enter it into any ATM machine to pay the bill. When the unsuspecting subscriber, however, entered the account number in the message, it turned out that he had just paid someone else's bill.” The STC itself is only responsible for a specific type of messages, called Cell Broadcast Services (CBS.) These are short messages sent to subscribers announcing new services, in cooperation with government authorities and charitable organizations. There are also targeted messages, like the ones about a campaign to help kidney failure patients and antidrug campaigns. “In order for a company to buy a specific number for SMS service from STC, they have to meet certain conditions,” said the source. “The numbers in their database have to be approved by the subscribers to whom they will send the messages, they should not send spam messages, they are not allowed to send any international messages, the content of the messages should be suitable with respect to traditions, and they should not damage the reputation of any other rival company.” He said STC retains the right to terminate the use of SMS services by any company if it received complaints from any subscriber about spam messages they had sent. The companies that send these messages are hardly short of resources to build their phone number databases. The main source, however are the subscribers themselves. “Whenever a subscriber buys something at a shopping mall, for instance, he or she may participate in a contest,” said the source. “They fill coupons with their names and mobile numbers. After the contest is over, some companies buy the boxes in which the coupons are dropped, and fill their database with people's personal information, including their age, sex and, of course, mobile number.” He urged subscribers not to give out their phone numbers to people they don't know or provide that information in competitions or similar activities. Itihad Itisalat (Mobily), the second telecommunications company operating in Saudi Arabia, has its own way of dealing with spam messages.“The percentage of spam messages our subscribers get is very low - and almost nothing compared to other networks, in fact – because our system has devices that prevent them,” said Humoud Al Ghobaini, Mobily's spokesman and head of corporate communications. “The only messages our users receive are the ones we send to them announcing new services, and we never send more than two or three a month to each subscriber.” __
