In the words of the Ghost Busters, “We’ve got one…” We’ve got what?, I hear you ask. We now have an example of alleged SMS spam with some real statistics rather than the usual conjecture. We know SMS spam has been growing through the monitoring of such sites as Grumble Text [1] however we’ve never had true insight into the scale of a professional SMS spamming operation.

Well recently that changed - TelecomWeb broke the story [2] that,

“Verizon Wireless filed a lawsuit against Nev.-based I-VEST Global Corporation and various "John Does," alleging they sent unsolicited commercial electronic messages (wireless spam) to its customers.” and that “The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Trenton, N.J., alleges that, beginning in April, I-VEST attempted to send more than 12 million text messages to Verizon Wireless handsets, offering information about buying stocks or real estate. However, the carrier says spam filtering and network monitoring...

The June State of Spam Report highlights the ongoing trend in the decline of image spam first reported last month in the May State of Spam Report. Image spam, which reached a high of 52 percent of overall spam in January, has shown a noticeable decline in most recent months, dropping around 10 percent each month in March and April to just 16 percent in May. One reason for the drop image spam is that spammers are always going to follow the money. The drop in image spam over the last two months tells us they think they can find a more effective way to get their messages into inboxes. While we have seen this decrease in image spam, the percentage of overall spam continues to remain the same at an average around 65 percent of email traffic for May....

The May ‘State of Spam’ report is now online. This month’s report highlights several interesting spam trends seen by Symantec, including the reduction in image spam, image uploading hosting solutions used in stock spam, company character assassination spam, and a new twist on the 419 spam technique.

419 spam is named after an article of the Nigerian Criminal Code which deals with fraud, and has primarily been used to defraud individuals with stories about African dictators and the sale of natural African reserves such as oil and gas.

We’ve all seen these scams. Typically they begin with a greeting and then immediately claim to need assistance in the transfer of funds to the U.S. Some try to tug on your heart strings with a story of loss, while others just make a direct play for your purse strings. But the point is, it’s a complete stranger asking for access to...