Friday, March 21, 2008

MOBILE PHONE SPAM

ABCnews.com produced a video exploring the implications of mobile phone spam. Posted on March 11, 2008 the link connects to previous discussion regarding push and pull technology.

This spam 'crisis' has created an environment making users aware of the implications of mobile phone use and cautions one must take when signing up to add extras to your phone. If we peer into the PR sphere, how will this impact the environment? One implication might be that using cell phones to ‘push’ a product might backfire if mobile users start blocking what appears on their phone. Another more serious implication would be how Spam might interfere with important and confidential documents. It seems that many professionals are using mobile devices to communicate with their clients as well as their office. The intrusion of Spam is becoming more dominate as the technology increases. Will Spam force PR professionals to alter their modes of communication? From the professionals I have talked to in the field, life without mobile devices would be quite difficult. Will spam force the profession to find safer ways of delivering information?

2 comments:

Giota said...

Hilary interesting topic.Imagine what will happen if peoples' mobile phones will be bombardized by an amount of messages some of which will me interesting and some completely useless. I believe that this will be a serious problem for the PR practitioners in the future and will cause a lot of problems. Actions should be taken immediately to prevent all these. According to a source Vodafone UK launched a trial program that allows users to blow the whistle on mobile spam by forwarding unsolicited messages to the company free of charge. Vodafone plans to send collated results daily to U.K. mobile messaging regulator ICSTIS for possible action.

PR Tech Blogger said...

Thanks Giota. After your post I did a little digging about the spam on mobile devices. I found this report that stated ‘nearly 2/3 of users are fed up by mobile phone spam’. Rightly so! Who wants spam invading their lives? The report went on to say that analysts said that ‘operators could no longer afford to dodge the problem of mobile spam’. You are correct; professionals who use mobile devices heavily do not have the time to sift through spam. If the report is correct….it looks like help is on the way.

http://www.itpro.co.uk/security/news/121944/mobile-spam-alienating-phone-users.html