Android Trojan taints US mobes, spews 500,000 texts A DAY A Trojan that infects Android devices is behind an increase in text message spam in the US. SpamSoldier infects smartphones and spews out thousands of SMS messages without the user's permission. The mobile irritant is primarily spreading through texts that offer free versions of popular paid-for games such as Need for Speed: …
The problem is most Android users are also the less 'techically savvy' end of the market as often they are getting the phones free (prob dont even know it's Android). Suppose the saving grace is many Android phones are not even on data plans so they may not even be able to download it.
The harsh part is more Android users will also be on PAYG so some app going crazy and sending thousands of texts could cost you dear.
From my experience everybody I know with an Android phone knows it is an android phone and has chosen it because it is better for them than an iPhone.
If you are stupid enough to install an app from a spam text message being on PAYG would actually be better... once your credit has ran out your phone will stop sending spam messages. If you are on contract you wont notice until the end of the month when a huge bill has built up and your network wont refund you because you accepted the terms when you installed the app.
"The problem is most Android users are also the less 'techically savvy' end of the market"
I'd say that many owners of low-end Android devices are certainly less 'techically savvy', probably on a par with the majority of iPhone users. The difference is the "walled garden" offers the iPhone users some protection. A lot of these people would, quite likely, have bought an iPhone if they could have afforded it.
Owners of high-end Android devices, however, are probably more "tech savvy" than most iPhone users. They have, after all, made a conscious decided to pay a considerable sum on a device that is not an iPhone. they could have bought an iPhone, but didn't. The only real reason why you'd decide to buy, say, an HTX 1X+ over the similarly priced iPhone 5 is because you have looked at both and decided the HTC is the better device for you.
A lot of iPhone 5 owners will have forked out their c£500 because the zeitgeist is that it is "the best". Very few will buy top-end Android devices without doing some research.
But I always check the privileges of an app before I install and have passed up installing many bits of well rated software because I didn't agree with the privileges it was wanting (why a simple game wants access to my accounts, to check network status and change system settings I will never know).
But failing that Droidwall would hopefully stop anything that managed to slip through the net. So personally I don't see any droid users with half a brain falling for this.... oh wait, we were talking about the Yanks weren't we?
Thank goodness for unlimited texting, I guess? US cell cos technically offer text packages, but make the pricing intentionally unattractive so people will get unlimited texting. I feel for those who have no texting and get charged the ridiculous 20 cents a text for spams. No I have not gotten this on my phone 8-)
As for network impact -- I recall someone doing research on this like 5 or 10 years ago, they rigged up a phone to a PC send texts as fast as possible, and at least one other phone to send and receive a few texts at a sane rate and measure if there was any slowdowns. AT&T, they aborted the test almost immediately as they found VOICE service failed (the control channel filled so thoroughly that call setups were failing.) T-Mobile did the best, they were limiting devices to about 1 text per 1.5 seconds so the phone was simply disallowed from spewing out dozens of texts a second. VZW and Sprint both had a small (couple second) slowdown. Ths all ignores the SMSCs (SMS centers) themselves bogging down of course, which is also a possibility.
If governments around the world set up registers for people to send their spam/email texts to, then fine the sponsoring company a tenner for each text collected, those companies would soon run out of money to pay to the spammers. Spammers only set up botnets on any platform because companies are unethical enough to pay for what they regard as just another advertising channel.
I've wondered about this for a while - trying to do antispam and take down spammers' web servers seems like a losing proposition, since there are millions of emails and dozens of servers (maybe far more?) per spammer. But someone has to get the money, in the end, and somebody's got to process it; I presume their customers aren't sending bank checks or cash, so *someone* is processing the money for them. Why aren't we going after that *one* guy rather than trying to stop a billion fucking emails?
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