Cellphone Spam

[Big Booger]

Is there any way to prevent or block cellphone spam? I get about 10-15 messages daily until my inbox fills up with "H" this and "onegai" that...

Plus I have to connect to the server to delete the message... I have to pay for those packets too.. that sucks. is there anyway to just block all that crap?

[GomiGirl]

Yup - it is really easy to do this. Slightly different for each carrier - you didn't mention which carrier you use so I will just speak generally.

There will be a section in the main menu for settings - mail settings or options. Easiest way from DoCoMo and Vodafone is from the English pages.

Select mail blocking and allow only mail from other phones - this will be an option.
You can also allow certain domains through as well - ie when you know that you get mail from your own domain or friends or mailing lists or Japanese lessons sent to your phone.


Anything else will be blocked.

There is a really tricky DNS lookup check that you can set up from the Japanese menu of DoCoMo so it will boot any mail that fails this (ie most spam) as now spammers are forging email addresses with carrier domains.

Personally I don't have any blocks on my keitai email address and I don't get any spam.. how do I do it??? Well, the trick is to have a really long email address. My address is 11 characters long. The emails are generated by a bot so the longer your address more permutations and combinations are possible so they will not find you.

[Captain Japan]

Personally I don't have any blocks on my keitai email address and I don't get any spam.. how do I do it??? Well, the trick is to have a really long email address. My address is 11 characters long. The emails are generated by a bot so the longer your address more permutations and combinations are possible so they will not find you.

I implemented Gomi's solution on my DoCoMo phone and it blocks a bunch but not everything.

One thing I've realized is that the amount of spam I get is a direct function of the number of mails I send and real messages I receive. So if I don't send any mails (and receive any) for a week I won't get any spam. But if I send a couple mails, invariably I'll get a few messages from some hot Lolitas looking for me to give them serious action. As well, I have noticed if I send a mail to someone new I get hit especially hard with the junk. I guess what I'm saying is that I don't know if it is simply a matter of a robot guessing addresses. I think there is some monitoring of traffic and selling of address taking place. Of course, this is just my guess; I am in no way an expert.

[GomiGirl]

I send and receive literally dozens of keitai email every day. (Just ask my friends who give me a hard time for it)

I get zero spam. I have had the odd virus (with the attachment stripped by the DoCoMo servers-thank you DoCoMo) but Spam emails - zero. I received a SPAM SMS the other day which I found amusing.


It is interesting that you notice and increase when you send or receive mail.. hhhmmm it does make one suspicious!!

[Big Booger]

Opps, I use vodaphone.

My email addy is exactly 12 characters long. I hoped using an english unusual name would do it, but alas it didn't.

I will give your blocking a try because this is getting to be a bit much. And I shouldn't have to pay to delete this crap... this should be done at the carrier level.

If it gets any worse I will either change names or change companies.

[GomiGirl]

Don't get mad at the carriers, get mad at the spammers.. talk about shooting the messenger.

Actually Vodafone is pretty good on the server level regarding blocking of spam - so imagine if they had no protection...

But once the spammers have you, the only real solution is to change your address. It doesn't matter if your address is a real word or not as the bots are not using words, rather just a program that generates addresses.. eg aaa@ aab@ aac@ and so on.

But you all might find it interesting that many of the emails from keitais to our support addresses for our mobile content sites are from people looking for keitai "friends" or people who want to meet others. I have a collection of photos as well.. a charming young russian lass, a variety of fillipino ladies, a skinny indian chap with his bike who describes himself as "studly", pictures of people's cats and dogs and many others. These are just people who send off these emails to addresses they don't know in the hope of.. well I am not really sure what they are hoping for. But it seems there are lots of lonely people out there looking to connect via keitais.. so as long as this is the market, the spam will continue unfortunately.

I always send a very polite email back to these people reminded them that this is a technical support email address and should they have questions or comments regarding the site, please send them through.

p.s. the indian bloke was hilarious.. I might be mean and post the photo here...

[Big Booger]

Don't get mad at the carriers, get mad at the spammers.. talk about shooting the messenger.

Actually Vodafone is pretty good on the server level regarding blocking of spam - so imagine if they had no protection...

But once the spammers have you, the only real solution is to change your address. It doesn't matter if your address is a real word or not as the bots are not using words, rather just a program that generates addresses.. eg aaa@ aab@ aac@ and so on.

But you all might find it interesting that many of the emails from keitais to our support addresses for our mobile content sites are from people looking for keitai "friends" or people who want to meet others. I have a collection of photos as well.. a charming young russian lass, a variety of fillipino ladies, a skinny indian chap with his bike who describes himself as "studly", pictures of people's cats and dogs and many others. These are just people who send off these emails to addresses they don't know in the hope of.. well I am not really sure what they are hoping for. But it seems there are lots of lonely people out there looking to connect via keitais.. so as long as this is the market, the spam will continue unfortunately.

I always send a very polite email back to these people reminded them that this is a technical support email address and should they have questions or comments regarding the site, please send them through.

p.s. the indian bloke was hilarious.. I might be mean and post the photo here...

agree with most of that and am curious about the studly Indian man..
The reason I am angry about the carrier is I have to pay for this spam. Every packet = more yen I have to pay. I should get the packet houdai plan and then say the hell with the spammers..

[Captain Japan]

Don't get mad at the carriers, get mad at the spammers.. talk about shooting the messenger.

I'm not so sure that the carriers are completely innocent. Like I said, I am pretty certain that there is some monitoring and selling of addresses going on. At first I didn't notice the relationship between spam and the mails I handled but now it is way more than a coincidence.

Anyone know if DoCoMo charges a few yen to receive a mail? I think that is the charge to send one.

[GomiGirl]

Anyone know if DoCoMo charges a few yen to receive a mail? I think that is the charge to send one.

Yup - sending and receiving.. so you need to put your foot down if people are always sending you photos or embedded gifs in their mail.. unless you like that kind of thing..

I think the correlation between SPAM and monitoring by the carriers is worth an indepth, hard-hitting, sake drenched postcard expose... (now just need to find a whistle-blower)

Personally I have never noticed as I don't get spam.

But the one-giri calls are back. I get at least 3 per week these days.

[Captain Japan]

I think the correlation between SPAM and monitoring by the carriers is worth an indepth, hard-hitting, sake drenched postcard expose... (now just need to find a whistle-blower)

If you stumble across such a person let me know.

But the one-giri calls are back. I get at least 3 per week these days.

I get these as well. Usually at about 7 in the morning. Why would I call someone back at 7AM? Usually to make sure it is indeed a wan giri number I type it into google. Three times out of four the number will have been posted on a webpage as indeed being a wan giri number.

[Mulboyne]

I have a Vodafone pre-paid job which I bought over two years ago when the company was still J-Phone.
Originally, my keitai address was my telephone number@Jphone domain which is a pretty simple for spammers to find but I didn't actually get any spam for ages and, since I didn't use the mail function a great deal, I didn't change anything.
I think in the entire time I've had this handset, I've sent a dozen emails. From about a year ago, I started to get 2 or 3 spam messages a week. Then, last November, Vodafone decided to implement a rebranding and changed the domain from J Phone to Vodafone. All Preca customers were automatically allocated a new 15-letter/number address to go with the new domain.
The day after the rebranding, I received 5 spam messages and it has kept up at that rate ever since. Based on what GomiGirl has written, I can only assume that the spammers went into overdrive to generate 15 character addresses to meet the new challenge. Or some little so-and-so at Vodafone generated some private income by selling a bunch of addresses.
In a quiet moment, I decided to change the address (which I now never use) but I'd forgotten how to do it. So I popped into a Vodafone shop where my 26 month-old handset also baffled the staff.
At least the messages don't queue up on the server and swamp me when I land at Narita after being out the country for months.

[Big Booger]

Well I tried getting into the settings of my vodaphone Nokia based ketai, and well, I don't know the security code to change the settings???

This is screwy. I guess I am going to have to go down to vodaphone and get them to do it...

By the way, where's the Indian stud's picture?