“Apple’s iMessage system is a great way to send texts from phone-to-phone without the paying fees to your mobile carrier,” Robert McMillan reports for Wired. “ut over the past year, it has also become something of a nuisance. iMessage, you see, is yet another communications tool being polluted by spam. It’s a cheap and easy way for luxury goods spammers to get their junk messages front-and-center on your phone.”
“A year ago, Tom Landesman—who works for security and anti-spam company Cloudmark—had never seen an iMessage spam,” McMillan reports. “But he and his company now say that, thanks to one particular aggressive campaign from a junk mailer, it accounts for more than 30 percent of all mobile spam messages.”
“Apple’s iMessage system spans across the iPad, iPhone, and Apple’s laptop and desktop systems. That fusion of the desktop and mobile world makes it particularly easy for scammers to write a Mac OS script that can send messages to all types of devices just as fast as Apple will allow,” McMillan reports. “‘It’s almost like a spammer’s dream,’ says Landesman. ‘With four lines of code, using Apple scripts, you can tell your Mac machine to send message to whoever they want.'”
Much more in the full article here.
Another good reason to make sure that we can turn that shit off. I don’t use it, do not text or use SMS.
Other than being an irritating little parasite, is there anything that you actually *do* do?
Yes, I help the sick and injured get well. And what do you at the pencil factory?
He draws pictures of conceited assholes like you who have a Mother Teresa complex.
… conceited, but he does not seem to be a parasite, as phasmainmachina claimed. So, maybe you could go a little easier on him – asshole, or not – rather than supporting a guy who (you claim) draws pencil sketches all day. We can all live without your buddy’s “art work”, but if you “need” “Darwin’s” attention, maybe you CAN’T live without it.
Yeah?
I guess I am in the 70% because I have yet to receive one spam text on iMessage.
I’ve seen a couple of spam iMessages in the last year, and I’ve had the same phone number and .Mac/MobileMe/iCloud address for years, and all are mapped to my iCloud account. Based on my personal experience, I can’t quite see how the 30% figure is remotely possible. How would it not be front-page news if any significant number of people were receiving dozens of spam messages on their iPhones as SMS-type messages every week?
I’ve had a few and I promptly block them. Maybe 3 in a year, but I’m also careful with my .mac, .me and .icloud addresses.
I’ve only received them once every few months, but have received 3 in the past month, so maybe the spammers are getting more clever. Each time I get one, I take the time to report it to Apple using Apple’s official instructions on how to report iMessage spam.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5821
Note that Apple believes it happens, what with having an official way to report it. I assume that reporting it helps them in their efforts to prevent it, not by filtering one address, but by figuring out patterns of abuse.
I also have never received a Spam iMessage….
Me too never a spam message with the service. Very pleased with it. I do however use another service with friends in Europe at times and it’s called Telegram. Very fast and no spam either. I killed Whatsapp months ago when Facebook purchased the company.
I’m with you. I haven’t received one either. To me iMessage is a Spammers Nightmare!
No iSpam on my equipment, additionally no one I know either.
The spam I have had were all over SMS. Particularly when entreating Walmart. lol Yes there are reasons to go there, saving money is not one of them.
Likewise, never even occurred to me that there was such a thing.
Having said that, I rarely text, or use iMessage, having little need to do so.
BTW, avoiding text messaging costs is only one advantage (and it’s not even an advantage for me because I have unlimited texting): you get to see when a message is delivered and you can write texts longer than the normal limit. And I think it’s faster as well…
And you can speak your text message. Just started doing that. Mostly it works pretty neat. Especially for longer texts.
It is happening and I have received more than a few. I keep banning them but they keep using a different account. Apple should put some effort in detecting spammers and deal with them severely.
Trouble is, these bot-generated IDs are one-time only and random.
Yeah, I’d have to agree with that. There’s nothing Apple can do about it. You block the number and another spam comes from a different number.
Never received a spam iMessage, and haven’t heard of anyone I know receiving one. So I’m gonna go ahead and call shenanigans on this whole thing.
It’s true. It’s really happening.
And it’s mostly ATT
I’ve had 3-4 over the year and I’m on verizon.
Yup, I’ve received a few (maybe one a month?) and I’m on AT&T.
I have AT&T and no iMessage spam. On similar note iMessage is an Apple service and not connected to AT&T.
I didn’t either but I just got my very first one yesterday.
I’ve received one spam message via iMessages. Was kind of shocked.. I wonder how Apple will deal with this without affecting legitimate msgs?
Apple controls ALL the .mac/mobileme/iCloud accounts. I haven’t read the terms of service word for word (who does?), but I’d be shocked if it does not say somewhere in there that you can’t use the system for spam efforts. All Apple has to do is have people forward spam messages to a specific Apple site, Apple verifies it as spam, then Apple kills that account.
It would take Apple setting up a specific team to deal with this, but Apple could kill the vast majority of these accounts and thus the spam generated by them.
yes i received a few sunglasses ads this past weekend
Must have been the same ones I got!
Also the first for me.
I haven’t gotten a lot, but in the past 6 months I’ve gotten around 8 or so. I got one yesterday that was ‘cc-d to 10 other non-sequential numbers. I just block the number but I’ll bet, long-term, it’s ineffective. I think registering with the gummint “do-not-call” list might be a good start.
Never had one single spam message on iMessage.
I received one about eight months ago and two on Saturday. I just pass them on to spam@icloud.com or spam@me.com.
No iMessage spam here.
Gotten about a half dozen. Frustrating.
I’ve received only one spam iMessage. Nothing to get all worked up about. I blocked the sender the moment I received it.
got a “rayban” message a few time last week – but not any since!!! bastages!!!
None yet.
Here’s a simple solution: Allow you to accept iMessages only from people in your Contacts. I get iMessages from many different people, but none of them are strangers.
——RM
Should have read the whole article. They almost have this already. You can set your iOS device not to notify you if a stranger iMessages you. But it still accepts the message.
——RM
Messages also allows you to block certain senders but they need to be in your address book. I’ve just done this; we’ll see how it works. Basically, I added the email address as a contact giving it some really odious name. I then set up a group, preceding the name with “zzz” so they show up on the bottom of my list. I then want back to Messages and under the “Blocked” tab, added this contact.
Can’t you turn those off at AT&T’s website? I did and no longer receive them.
I received 3 of them in the past 2 weeks. Never received any before that.
It’s true. I’ve gotten 3 or 4