- Step #1: Investigate Whitelist and Blacklist Software for Both SMS and E-Mail Messages for Your Mobile Users (or Develop Your Own)
- Step #2: Stay Up-to-Date On the Growing Problem of Wireless Spam with Virus Payloads, and Prepare Patches and Other Defenses
- Step #3: Find Better Ways to Filter the Messages that Get Routed to Mobile Devices
- Step #4: Make Sure that Your Carrier Knows You're Concerned About Mobile Spam
- Step #5: Institute an Enterprise Policy that Protects Against Wireless Spam
- Step #6: Get Serious About the Problem
Step #3: Find Better Ways to Filter the Messages that Get Routed to Mobile Devices
As the mobile spam problem develops a higher profile, users have evolved a range of approaches to weed out mobile spam that corporate e-mail servers might miss. Most are managed directly by the user rather than through enterprise or carrier messaging networks.
For example, some users are beginning to filter device-specific messages (those directed to cell phone number@domain.com) before they arrive. They're wise to do so, given that all-digit left halves of device addresses are easy for spammers to guess at and abuse.
Rather than letting the mail flow directly into their device e-mail client, savvy users create an alias on the corporate mail server and have the server forward mail to the device. That way, even mobile e-dresses can dodge most incoming spam.
Meanwhile, device manufacturers such as Blackberry maker Research in Motion allow users to filter mail with their desktop client before it hits the device. This method helps users to further screen out any unwanted communications before they go mobile.
There are also standalone desktop spam filters for mobile devices, such as Audiotrieve's InBoxer. One feature, PopBoxer, filters all mail through the user's desktop Outlook client and its own spam engine. PopBoxer then forwards good mail to any POP account used by a Treo, Blackberry, PDA, cell phone or remote e-mail device.