European mobile operators aren’t protecting users against spam

Cloudmark announced the results of a recent survey, which finds that 100 percent of the top 12 mobile operators in Europe anticipate mobile spam volumes to rise as adoption of mobile social networking and mobile e-mail increases. Remarkably, however, only 16 percent are considering how to best guard against spam through mobile Internet and e-mail.

As use of mobile messaging continues to surge, users of text and multimedia messaging are also encountering a corresponding increase in the number of unsolicited messages sent to their mobile devices. Currently, mobile operators across Europe admit that up to 20 percent of their users are affected by mobile SMS spam; however, 83 percent don’t yet have a filtering system in place to protect customers.

Further, while all the surveyed operators acknowledge the spam problem, most are still not planning to implement a solution. A full quarter of those surveyed claim that they do not have the necessary budget and an additional 25 percent reasoned that they do not believe the problem to be big enough or they would deal with it at a later date.