SMS spam has become a major problem in India, which has become the world’s largest and fastest-growing mobile market with over 700 million subscribers.  In an effort to combat the problem, The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has imposed a controversial limit of 100 SMS messages per day, per person.

The new rule, which went into force today, should end the dozens of unsolicited text messages received daily by Indians, according to the telecom regulator.  Though regulatory agencies across the region have made broad effort to curb the amount of unsolicited messages users receive, there’s still a huge problem with spam associated with things like credit cards and weight loss scams.

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Social networking giant Facebook is pushing ahead with what’s being called one of its largest privacy updates in company history.

In the past, the social network has been criticized for seeming to bury privacy settings in obscure menus. Now when users are tagged in a posting – such as a photograph or video – they will have the option to confirm or remove their identity before it appears on their profile.

According to the BBC‘s in depth look at the changes – a report that was actually more comprehensive than Facebook’s own description – it is hoped the new safeguard “will eliminate the problem of malicious tagging, which is often used by cyberbullies who add other people’s names to unpleasant images.”

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The following is the weekly guest series by Derek Johnson, Founder & CEO of SMS marketing provider Tatango. You can text him at (206) 334-4012 or email him at derek@tatango.com.

There’s been a lot of noise lately in the mobile marketing industry about long codes, some are even questioning if these will be the death of short codes. I’m still bearish on long codes as the carriers have yet to come out publicly and give their approval for long code A2P (application to person) messaging. This post though isn’t about long codes being approved or not approved by the carriers, or even if long codes are a good substitute for short codes. This post is about why I feel text message spammers are on the verge of a mass exodus away from short codes to long codes.

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The ultimate guru of Facebook spam is being brought to justice.

On Thursday, a man by the name of Sanford Wallace, who was indicted by a federal grand jury, dropped his fight and turned himself into the FBI.

Whatever did Mr. Wallace do to incur the wrath of the feds?

He allegedly sent 27 million spam messages via Facebook, a process that, according to the LA Times, compromised an estimated half-million registered user accounts.

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SMS marketing provider Tatango has published an interesting infographic on the amount of SMS spam received in the U.S, broken down by a number of data points.

Tatango, and the company’s CEO Derek Johnson, have long been outspoken in their fight against SMS spam and the data in this graphic helps explain why.  The company surveyed 500 U.S. consumers in July to gain insight into their experience with text message spam.  Some quick stats from the survey include the fact that 68% of respondents said they’d received SMS spam, and that women under the age of 17 are the most likely to receive spam.

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The following is the weekly guest series by Derek Johnson, Founder & CEO of text message marketing software Tatango.

I feel like all of my efforts to curb text message spam within the text message marketing industry aren’t making any progress. I’ve done a post about how text message spam will be the death of text message marketing and written an open letter to the Mobile Marketing Association. Recently I went so far as to commission my own text message spam report to show the industry how big of a problem we have on our hands. The report will come out in early August and without giving too much away, our findings show that text message spam is more than a problem, it’s a pandemic. Even with all of these things I’ve done, it seems like the majority of text message providers don’t give a crap as they continue to engage in shady, borderline illegal activities without any regard to consumers, the industry or the rules put in place by the mobile phone providers.

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Group-buying powerhouse Groupon sent an email to users over the weekend outlining changes to its terms of use and privacy policies.  The most important of which relates to how the company is collecting and using mobile location data and the breadth of information now collected on users of its service.

“If you use a Groupon mobile app and you allow sharing through your device, Groupon may collect geo-location information from the device and use it for marketing deals to you (and for other purposes listed in the ‘How Groupon Uses Personal Information’ section of the Updated Privacy Statement),” the email said.  The company also said that these changes “address some new types of business relationships the company is forging and new technologies it is implementing or may use.”

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