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.

India introduced its “Do-Not Call list” in 2007, and 135M mobile subscribers have since signed up.  Since marketers can’t make unsolicited calls to mobile users, they’ve turned to SMS, and daily spam messaging has gone up exponentially.  Since other initiatves introduced to curb the problem were unsuccessful, the TRAI saw imposing a daily limit as the only answer.

Though limiting text messages to 100 per day shouldn’t effect a majority of mobile users, there’s still a subset — mainly younger, text-happy consumers — that will likely hit or exceed the limit.  Others argue that the government has no right to limit communication, even if it’s in their own best interest.

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.”

Other modifications and upgrades include:

• In line controls – each item on a user’s wall has individual privacy options, such as public, friends and custom
• Tag takedown – the ability to remove tags of self, ask the person who tagged you to remove it, or block the tagger
• Universal tagging – users can tag anyone, not just Facebook friends. Other person can choose not to accept the tagged post on their profile
• Location tagging – geographic locations can be added in all versions of Facebook, not just mobile app
• Profile view – the option to see how others view your profile is added above the news feed

“These changes will start to roll out in the coming days,” Facebook announced on its official blog. “When they reach you, you’ll see a prompt for a tour that walks you through these new features from your homepage. In the meantime, you can read more about the upcoming changes from the links throughout this post. We’ll look forward to your feedback on all of this.”

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.

Here are my three reasons why text message spammers will love long codes, and in-turn will make the migration.

1. Low Messaging Costs - There is one thing that all spammers have in common, if there are two methods of spamming that achieve the same results, they will always pick the cheapest method. Sending messages through a long code is significantly cheaper than through a short code, especially when you factor in the cost to setup and manage a short code.

2. Easy Setup - Screw applying for a short code, waiting, signing contracts with aggregators, waiting, submitting campaigns to the carriers for approvals and waiting some more. With long codes, there are no approvals, no setup fees, really nothing getting in the way of spammers sending their first text message.

3. No Stupid Rules - Spammers don’t want to have to comply with stupid rules and audits of those rules, that kind of stuff just gets in the way of spamming. With long codes, no one is watching, so feel free to say fuck you to the MMA Best Practices, the mobile carriers, the CTIA, etc.

4. Hiding is Easy - Have you ever tried to find out who to blame for those long code spam messages you’ve been receiving? It’s nearly impossible, even with the almighty Google. Spammers love staying anonymous, and with short codes that is hard to do with things like The US Common Short Code WHOIS Directory, The CSC Directory and SMS Watch Dog. With long codes though, spammers are able to cycle through batches of different phone numbers with each and every campaign, dodging detection with every message.

Now that I think about it, I actually love long codes. It’s a fact of life that there will always be people wanting to send text message spam, but with the rise of long codes, these spammers will now have a new home. After this migration to long codes, short codes will once again be a spam-free haven for SMS marketing.

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.

The message blitzes took place on three separate occasions.

Each time, the 43-year-old Las Vegas resident hacked into then-Palo Alto-based Facebook’s computer network and sent spam programs to users of the popular social networking site, the indictment said.

The LA Times says that Wallace succeeded in getting past the site’s spam filters and infiltrated real accounts, “logging on as strangers and posting the spam messages to their friends’ walls.”

Although Wallance is now free on $100,000 bond, the incident has promoted Facebook to beef up its security and spend even more time erecting safeguards to curb both the frequency and severity of similar attacks.

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.

“This report highlights a major problem in the text message marketing industry,” explained Johnson.  ”With the rise in text message spam, the effectiveness of marketing through this channel will drop significantly if gone un-checked.  With over two thirds of the U.S. population receiving text message spam, it’s time for businesses to start realizing the impact text message spam has on their customers and selecting software providers like Tatango that have instituted a zero tolerance policy for text message spam.”

Text Message Marketing by 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.

So instead of continuing to fight what I now see as a losing battle, the next best thing is to empower the consumer and teach them how to fight off text message spam individually. Here are my 6 steps on how to stop unwanted text messages.

Quick Note: The steps below are meant for short code text message spam, which comes from a 5-6 digit phone number. If you’ve received text message spam from a 10 digit phone number (which are sometimes called long codes or long numbers) or a phone number that looks like an email – 2063344012@att.com (which is called SMTP messaging), I’ll be honest, you’re kind of screwed. These types of  text message campaigns aren’t approved by the mobile phone providers and aren’t held to the same standards as short codes are. If you do receive a text message spam from a long code, skip to steps #5 & #6.

Step #1 – Opt-Out

If the short code provider is following all of the rules, opting out of a text messaging campaign should be pretty simple. All you have to do is reply to text message spam with any of the words STOP, END, QUIT or UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the text message. You will know if it works because you should receive a text message back to your mobile phone confirming that you have successfully opted-out of that text message campaign. If one of the words doesn’t work, I would try the others just in case. If this doesn’t work, move on to step #2.

Step #2 – Help Command

Similar to step #1, reply to any text message spam with the word HELP in the body of the text message. If the short code provider is following all of the rules, you will get a message back with information about the short code provider, such as a toll free support phone number, email address and a website. Use that information to contact the text message spammer and tell them to stop. If you don’t get anything back after replying HELP, move onto step #3.

Step #3 – Identify The Sender

Look for any unique identifiers in the text message campaign to help you figure out who is behind the text message spam. Look for things like a phone number, an address, a business name, etc. If you’re able to find any of these within the text message spam, contact the offender and tell them to stop blowing up your mobile phone with text message spam. If you can’t find any of this information within the text message, move onto step #4.

Step #4 – Identify the Short Code Provider

If you are unable to identify the sender of the text message spam, you need to move up the SMS totem pole. You will now need to figure out which short code provider the sender is using to spam you. There are two methods that work really well, which are explained below. Once you find the short code provider, contact them and tell them you’re fed up and want to be removed from all text message campaigns.

Google Method – Use Google and the following search terms with the offending short code number in place of [short code number]. This should point you to the short code provider’s website where you can find contact information.

• [short code number]
• Text [short code number]
• Short code [short code number]
• SMS [short code number]
• Stop to [short code number]
• Help to [short code number]
• SMS marketing [short code number]
• Text message marketing [short code number]

SMS Directory Method – There are a few short code directories out there that list a bunch of different short codes and information on each short code provider, usually providing contact information for each provider.

• The US Common Short Code WHOIS Directory – Not an official directory, but with nearly twice the amount of listings as the official CSC directory, it’s a good bet you will find the short code you are looking for here.
• The CSC Directory – The official Common Short Code Administration directory.
• SMS Watch Dog – This is the only directory that lets you leave complaints about specific short codes. Even though it serves as a nice directory to share your pain with others, it’s sometimes still unclear who actually owns the short codes.

Step #5 – Call Your Mobile Phone Provider

If you can’t find any information online about the sender or short code provider that is spamming you, now it’s time to call your mobile phone provider. When you call them, be sure to have the short code number and when you received the text message spam handy. Usually mobile phone providers can help resolve text message spam issues, or at the very least give you the information you need to stop receiving the spam. Below are the support lines for the top 10 mobile phone providers in the United States. I tested them personally and they all work, so as of July 20, 2011 these are accurate.

• Verizon –  (800) 922-0204
• AT&T – (800) 331-0500
• Sprint/Nextel – (800) 639-6111
• T-Mobile – (800) 937-8997
• Tracfone – (800) 323-2366
• MetroPCS – (888) 863-8768
• Clearwire – (888) 253-2794
• U.S. Cellular – (888) 944-9400
• Cricket – (866) 384-4425
• Simple Mobile – (877) 878-7908

Step #6 – Call Your Attorney

I’m completely serious on this one. If you arrive at this step without a resolution to your text message spam issue, it’s now time to teach the spammers a lesson, and the only way to do this is to hit them where it hurts; inside their wallets. With past multi-million dollar text message spam lawsuits, you can be sure to find an attorney very quickly that will fight for your case.

“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.”

What this means is that the company has broadened the definition of personal information to include your interests and habits and that it will share that personal information with partners in new offering areas, such as travel deals with Expedia.  The company said that it’s trying to improve readability of its consumer information and give greater transparency to its customers.  While the group-buying phenomenon continues to gain momentum, the real battle will be on the mobile front going forward, and that’s exactly what Groupon is preparing for.

While Groupon may have had an advantage in the beginning by simply being the first to market with the “social buying” concept, a slew of competitors have popped up since offering the exact same thing.  Companies like LivingSocial have done well giving Groupon a run for its money.  Moving forward, however, the emerging winner will be defined by how these companies translate their success on the Web to the mobile channel.  Groupon knows this and is positioning itself to collect as much user data as possible to be able to serve up the most relevant deals possible.

Therein lies the key to the future of social buying.  While daily deals are big with users these days, there remains no relevance between the deals emailed to users everyday and what the users actually like to purchase.  Building on this model while leveraging the targeting and relevance capabilities of the mobile channel will be the true test.  Groupon is quickly laying the groundwork, but only time will tell if it will pay off in the end.

For some time now, Facebook has been closely monitoring (via spam-fighting bots) and yanking any and all apps that have received significantly negative user feedback.

But the overzealous bots eventually started penalizing much too harshly the developers who were largely left in the dark about why their updates were raising red flags, getting blocked, and causing all sorts of related problems.

Facebook is endeavoring to solve this issue by developing and launching a new feature

Today we’re launching improvements to our enforcement systems that will provide more user feedback directly to developers and will use that feedback to shape app distribution in a more granular way

“Today, we’re starting to rollout a ‘News Feed’ tab in Insights to show you both positive user feedback (e.g., comments, likes, clicks) and negative user feedback (e.g., hides, marks as spam) on your content,” says Facebook engineer Mike Vernal. “The red and green areas of these graphs will provide guidance on whether your app is generally in good standing or whether your app is receiving a significant amount of negative feedback. We will be adding more granular Insights for other channels in the coming months.”

In addition to the new spam report cards, Facebook is revamping its monitoring and enforcement procedures to better serve the purposes they’re intended to serve.

In the coming months, we will be moving from per-channel enforcements to a more sophisticated ranking model where the amount of distribution that content gets will be a direct function of its quality. Good content will be seen by more people, poor content will be seen by fewer people (and potentially no one). We think this is the right long-term model, as it rewards apps that focus on great social experiences while minimizing negative experiences.

To read the full announcement from Facebook, click here.

At Tatango we use the Mobile Marketing Association’s (MMA) U.S. Consumer Best Practices as any Christian would use the bible. This document guides every company’s decision in the world of mobile marketing and is looked to daily for both insight and resolution.

Have you ever read the full 165 pages of the MMA U.S. Consumer Best Practices? If you haven’t, you can download it here. Fair warning though, it reads like a technical manual so I would start off with a Red Bull before taking the plunge. Like any good technical manual, this document is extremely cut and dry, as it should be to protect consumers in what some are still calling the “wild west” of mobile marketing.Like the Christian Bible, there are parts of the MMA U.S. Consumer Best Practices that at times can be confusing to one that studies it as intimately as I have. Unlike the Christian Bible though, the authors are still alive and that’s why I write this open letter to you at the Mobile Marketing Association, to ask for a revision of this document.

Dear MMA,

Why do I ask for a revision of your best practices? In section 1.5-5 of the document you state:

“Subscriber may initiate opt-in from a paper-based consent form.”

In plain english, this means a customer can ask to receive SMS messages from a business by writing their mobile phone number down on some sort of paper form. The problem though is that in section 1.5-3 you state:

“When opt-in occurs via the web or other non-mobile point of origination, the content provider must obtain verification that the subscriber is in possession of the handset being opted-in to the service.”

In plain english, the business has to confirm that that the customer is writing down their own mobile phone number, not the mobile phone number of a friend, relative or a random combination of 7 digits. When trying to apply this to a paper-based consent form, I would have to quote the French: c’est impossible!

This verification process is possible with both a Web and mobile originated opt-in, but not with a paper-based consent form. With an opt-in from a web interface you recommend a “PIN code” be sent to the subscribers mobile phone, which then is entered back into the web interface to confirm possession of that mobile phone. With a mobile originated opt-in (i.e. Text PIZZA to 68398) the mobile originated message itself verifies mobile phone possession. As I see it, there is no possible way to obtain verification that the subscriber is in possession of the handset when opting into an SMS campaign from a paper-based consent form.

My solution, the phrase “Subscriber may initiate opt-in from a paper-based consent form” must be permanently removed from the Mobile Marketing Association U.S. Consumer Best Practices. By removing this phrase, you are not only making your document clearer to understand and implement, you will also be eliminating the majority of SMS spam. Without paper-based consent forms, SMS providers will no longer be able to use this loophole to justify letting their clients directly import mobile phone numbers into an SMS campaign. Once revised, all SMS providers will be required to use either a web interface or mobile originated opt-in, thus preventing the death of SMS marketing.

Sincerely,

Derek Johnson, Founder & CEO of Tatango.com

The sobering reality for SMS is that spammers have quickly latched on to the emerging marketing tactic to such a degree that it now threatens the future growth of this otherwise red-hot and widely embraced advertising platform.

“This is obviously causing great frustration for those mobile phone owners who are being plagued by spam,” says DMA chief of operations Mike Lordan, “and it’s also causing serious damage to the legitimate mobile marketing industry.”

“If spam is allowed to continue unchecked, then consumers will naturally become hostile to all mobile marketing messages,” he concluded.

Lordan’s comments echo the sentiments of Derek Johnson, founder & CEO of Tatango, who recently, in a guest commentary on MMW, expressed similar concerns about the spam-SMS connection.

“What will cause the demise of SMS marketing as we know it?” Johnson asked in the post. “Simple. The continued practice of SMS providers allowing businesses the ability to import customer phone numbers into an SMS campaign, bypassing their need to receive the customers permission through an opt-in.”

Perhaps what’s most unsettling about the unwanted practice of SMS spamming is the fact that many mobile customers simply don’t know how to address the problem.

The DMA survey, for example, found that 46% of respondents had “no idea who they would complain to,” while another 17% would complain to their network provider.

Ultimately, however, Johnson touched on what may be the only truly viable and effective solution to eliminating – or at least seriously mitigating – the practice of SMS spamming.

“I’m calling for all SMS providers to band together and put a stop to this self-destructive practice.,” Johnson urges. “If we don’t act now, my nightmares will soon become our harsh reality.”