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The Spread of Spam: Junk Mail on the Cell

Aired June 16, 2003 - 15:42   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: I just got back from a long weekend, took me most of the day to clear out my e-mail box of 500 pieces of spam. You know that unwanted e-mail that is crowding all of our e- mail boxes?
Well, for those of you who are using cell phones with text messaging capability, that little bit of hell is about to follow you around wherever you go on your belt. Let me give you a few stats.

First of all, the United Kingdom has seen an explosion in text messaging from 2002 to 2003; 1.5 billion text messages sent in April alone. They do it there a lot more than we do here. It also saw cell phone spam grow fivefold.

South Korea, did you know that was a cell phone hotbed of activity? Seventy percent of South Koreans have cell phones. It's kind of a spammer's dream, I guess. And the government has said it will spend $17 billion to try and fight the problem.

In Australia just this past week they tried to ban phone spam. Violators having to pay up to $10 million in fines. Good luck enforcing all that.

The Mobile Marketing Association, which I guess is a euphemism for people who are spammers, say all this could be an $8 billion a year industry by the year 2005. Here's the catch, though. If you receive spam on your cell phone, you have to pay for it because it's part of your air time deal, depending on your plan, of course.

Joining me now is Orson Swindle. He is the commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission. Orson, we haven't had much luck. It's good to have you with us, by the way.

ORSON SWINDLE, FTC COMMISSIONER: Nice to be with you, Miles.

O'BRIEN: We've had very little luck stopping spam on our desktops and our laptops. What are the chances we can stop it from entering into our lives via our text message phones?

SWINDLE: Well, I think if people as turned off as your co-host to spam in the earlier comments, maybe we can do something about it. Seriously, I think we're probably going to learn a lot from the spam experience with computers and e-mail, the normal e-mail that we're all familiar with that you said you had hundreds of spam messages.

We've got to learn from that, because we literally could do severe harm to an incredibly convenient technology. And as you mentioned, it can cost people real money.

O'BRIEN: Well, and, you know, we aren't even talking about the loss of productivity I had today. And you start extrapolating that over the entire Internet and you're talking about a lot of -- you know, billions and billions of dollars of productivity loss. At what point, though, does the whole system just come to a crashing halt on the weight of all these spams?

SWINDLE: Well, you know, we've seen some crashing halts in computers and through our ISPs through the proliferation of spam. And, of course, with spam comes viruses. We haven't talked about that yet with cell phones, but I would assume that's technically possible.

But I think the legitimate industry, legitimate businesses and legitimate marketers realize that they could be ruining a great vehicle for legitimate advertising if it's abused. And I'm pretty sure and am aware that they are working on some high standards of personal conduct as far as the businesses go and setting a self- regulatory model to try to police this.

But I think our experiences, as I've said, with spam on computers is probably a good learning lesson. Certainly the experience of the Europeans, the Japanese, the Koreans, they're being inundated by it. And if we don't get a grip on it we will ruin it.

O'BRIEN: Well, you know what's interesting, though, as you say -- and I'm sure there are many honorable marketers out there -- but it only takes just a few with a few key strokes at very little cost up front to really cause mayhem, right?

SWINDLE: That's true. That's the nature of the technology. We had a hearing here several weeks ago on spam of the computer type, e- mail type. One spammer was sending out -- if I remember correctly -- 180 million spam messages every 12 hours. Can you imagine that coming into your phone system?

O'BRIEN: Wow. Wow. That's just so frightening. So what's to be done? Is there anything that can be done sort of preemptively before these text messages become more widespread in the U.S. that maybe in retrospect could have been done on the Internet for desktops and laptops and so forth?

SWINDLE: Well, first and foremost, I think the service providers are blocking an extraordinary amount of the text messaging kind of spam. Wait till we star getting the telemarketing calls, although I do understand that's illegal.

O'BRIEN: Oh, I'm sure that's coming.

SWINDLE: That's illegal. So the problem will be, as with regular spam, and that's tracking down the perpetrators. I think industry that's advertising has got to make darn sure the people they contract to do their marketing don't engage in this kind of, I think, malicious conduct because it can be very expensive. It can shut down systems, it can shut down an enormously convenient service that we're coming to love and behold dearly. O'BRIEN: It could kill the golden goose if we don't watch it, huh?

SWINDLE: Absolutely.

O'BRIEN: Orson Swindle is with the Federal Trade Commission. Thanks very much for your insights. Let's hope the best and hope there's a special place in hell for these spammers, OK?

SWINDLE: Thanks a lot, Miles. I like that.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com







Aired June 16, 2003 - 15:42   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: I just got back from a long weekend, took me most of the day to clear out my e-mail box of 500 pieces of spam. You know that unwanted e-mail that is crowding all of our e- mail boxes?
Well, for those of you who are using cell phones with text messaging capability, that little bit of hell is about to follow you around wherever you go on your belt. Let me give you a few stats.

First of all, the United Kingdom has seen an explosion in text messaging from 2002 to 2003; 1.5 billion text messages sent in April alone. They do it there a lot more than we do here. It also saw cell phone spam grow fivefold.

South Korea, did you know that was a cell phone hotbed of activity? Seventy percent of South Koreans have cell phones. It's kind of a spammer's dream, I guess. And the government has said it will spend $17 billion to try and fight the problem.

In Australia just this past week they tried to ban phone spam. Violators having to pay up to $10 million in fines. Good luck enforcing all that.

The Mobile Marketing Association, which I guess is a euphemism for people who are spammers, say all this could be an $8 billion a year industry by the year 2005. Here's the catch, though. If you receive spam on your cell phone, you have to pay for it because it's part of your air time deal, depending on your plan, of course.

Joining me now is Orson Swindle. He is the commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission. Orson, we haven't had much luck. It's good to have you with us, by the way.

ORSON SWINDLE, FTC COMMISSIONER: Nice to be with you, Miles.

O'BRIEN: We've had very little luck stopping spam on our desktops and our laptops. What are the chances we can stop it from entering into our lives via our text message phones?

SWINDLE: Well, I think if people as turned off as your co-host to spam in the earlier comments, maybe we can do something about it. Seriously, I think we're probably going to learn a lot from the spam experience with computers and e-mail, the normal e-mail that we're all familiar with that you said you had hundreds of spam messages.

We've got to learn from that, because we literally could do severe harm to an incredibly convenient technology. And as you mentioned, it can cost people real money.

O'BRIEN: Well, and, you know, we aren't even talking about the loss of productivity I had today. And you start extrapolating that over the entire Internet and you're talking about a lot of -- you know, billions and billions of dollars of productivity loss. At what point, though, does the whole system just come to a crashing halt on the weight of all these spams?

SWINDLE: Well, you know, we've seen some crashing halts in computers and through our ISPs through the proliferation of spam. And, of course, with spam comes viruses. We haven't talked about that yet with cell phones, but I would assume that's technically possible.

But I think the legitimate industry, legitimate businesses and legitimate marketers realize that they could be ruining a great vehicle for legitimate advertising if it's abused. And I'm pretty sure and am aware that they are working on some high standards of personal conduct as far as the businesses go and setting a self- regulatory model to try to police this.

But I think our experiences, as I've said, with spam on computers is probably a good learning lesson. Certainly the experience of the Europeans, the Japanese, the Koreans, they're being inundated by it. And if we don't get a grip on it we will ruin it.

O'BRIEN: Well, you know what's interesting, though, as you say -- and I'm sure there are many honorable marketers out there -- but it only takes just a few with a few key strokes at very little cost up front to really cause mayhem, right?

SWINDLE: That's true. That's the nature of the technology. We had a hearing here several weeks ago on spam of the computer type, e- mail type. One spammer was sending out -- if I remember correctly -- 180 million spam messages every 12 hours. Can you imagine that coming into your phone system?

O'BRIEN: Wow. Wow. That's just so frightening. So what's to be done? Is there anything that can be done sort of preemptively before these text messages become more widespread in the U.S. that maybe in retrospect could have been done on the Internet for desktops and laptops and so forth?

SWINDLE: Well, first and foremost, I think the service providers are blocking an extraordinary amount of the text messaging kind of spam. Wait till we star getting the telemarketing calls, although I do understand that's illegal.

O'BRIEN: Oh, I'm sure that's coming.

SWINDLE: That's illegal. So the problem will be, as with regular spam, and that's tracking down the perpetrators. I think industry that's advertising has got to make darn sure the people they contract to do their marketing don't engage in this kind of, I think, malicious conduct because it can be very expensive. It can shut down systems, it can shut down an enormously convenient service that we're coming to love and behold dearly. O'BRIEN: It could kill the golden goose if we don't watch it, huh?

SWINDLE: Absolutely.

O'BRIEN: Orson Swindle is with the Federal Trade Commission. Thanks very much for your insights. Let's hope the best and hope there's a special place in hell for these spammers, OK?

SWINDLE: Thanks a lot, Miles. I like that.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com