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    Five major North American carriers join global SMS spam reporting service

    Five major North American carriers join global SMS spam reporting service

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    AT&T, Bell Mobility, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless have all joined the GSMA's SMS Spam Reporting Service, which maintains a global clearinghouse of threats and lets phone users report spam.

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    Nokia Spam
    Nokia Spam

    AT&T, Bell Mobility, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless have all joined the GSMA's SMS spam reporting system, which maintains a global clearinghouse of threats and lets phone users report spam. The GSMA, a worldwide mobile phone association that hosts, among other things, Mobile World Congress, has operated the Spam Reporting Service since February of last year. The service collects and breaks down spam reports, both analyzing them for potential trends and letting carriers pool efforts to find in-progress attacks and block them. For consumers, the system implements a universal short code (usually "7726," which spells "SPAM") for reporting texts, as well as an Android app that can submit details automatically.

    While this system will hopefully give people more options when they see an unwanted text, the problems these carriers face aren't particularly severe. According to the GSMA, North America has one of the lowest incidences of SMS spam in the world; indeed, mobile malware is probably a bigger issue, albeit one that carriers can do less to prevent. The service should launch today for subscribers of the five companies, although details don't look to have been added to their sites.