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Technology Stocks : The New Qualcomm - a S&P500 company -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: slacker711 who wrote (8572)	4/12/2000 11:39:00 AM
From: slacker711	Respond to of 13582

More details on AT&T spam....supposedly PCS has a filter. washingtonpost.com 'Spammers' New Calling: Cell Phones Unsolicited Ads Show Up in Area, and Some Recipients Scowl By Mike Musgrove Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, April 11, 2000; Page E01 Mike Malarkey, a business-development manager for the District-based educational Web developer Blackboard Inc., was in the middle of a meeting last Thursday when his Nokia cell phone chirped, sounding a bit like the low-battery warning. When he checked it after the meeting, he saw that the battery was fine, but he'd just received a text message on the phone's screen--an advertisement for a Web site selling cell-phone accessories. "I'm just surprised that it's progressed to phones," said Malarkey. He was one of the first recipients of an apparently novel kind of unsolicited electronic advertising, or "spam," sent via the text-messaging service on his AT&T Wireless phone. Another AT&T customer, Laurie Ann Ryan, a public relations director who asked that her firm not be identified, was infuriated to receive the same message last Thursday: "Clearly the sender knows it's going to interrupt somebody's day." She called the ad "excessively aggressive and invasive" because a cell phone is something users tend to carry with them all day--unlike the personal computers that e-mail spammers have targeted for years. One veteran of the long-running fight against spammers said this abuse of AT&T's system should come as no surprise. "I expect to see more of it unless this kind of thing is controlled," said Nick Nicholas, an "evangelist" at the Mail Abuse Prevention System, an organization that tries to get Internet providers to cut off spammers' access. Nicholas noted AT&T Wireless's configuration of its text-message system as a possible vulnerability: Its customers automatically get an e-mail address consisting of their phone number followed by "@mobile.att.net." "Because of the way AT&T sets up the e-mail account, all you need to do is just try consecutive numbers," he said. Nicholas said AT&T should have been able to detect this "war dialing" approach and block the spammers' access. AT&T spokeswoman Alexa Graf hadn't heard of Plugout.com's unsolicited transmission until a reporter called yesterday afternoon. "The last thing we want to do is start spamming our customers," she said. The text messaging service is an included feature with AT&T's service; customers are not billed for incoming text messages. Sprint PCS offers a similar service, while Verizon Wireless (formerly Bell Atlantic Mobile), Nextel and Cellular One charge extra for the ability to receive text alerts. A spokesman for Sprint PCS reported no spamming incidents and said, "We have software that can detect a spam and is designed to prevent it from happening." The company behind the ad, Plugout.com, is a Fort Lee, N.J.-based operation whose site has only been fully operational since February. Rudy Temiz, the company's 22-year-old president, said yesterday afternoon that he didn't plan to repeat the exercise but expressed no remorse either, saying that the marketing technique had generated "quite a few" sales. "One of the reasons we're doing this," said Temiz, "is because every single dot-com company isn't graced with venture capital and all us smaller Web sites have to find more creative ways to get on the map." He didn't reveal how many messages had been sent out or how he had obtained his list of phone numbers but said, "We're only doing it one time. Nobody in Washington, D.C., should ever hear from us again." Nicholas, the anti-spammer, called Temiz's marketing, "more ignorance than anything, ignorance of the economics of the Internet or of the culture of the Internet." Vincent Zahn, Plugout.com's director of strategy, further defended the text ads. "What better way to reach your target market?" he asked, saying, "We look at it as if we're doing these people a favor if they're looking for these kinds of products." Responded AT&T customer Ryan, "They're not doing me any favors by soliciting me over my cell phone."