Spam from Cingular

A moment should also be taken to point out what a collection of incompetent fools Qwest is. My frustrations with them don't involve cellular service, and never will. I try to avoid giving them money, currently however, I give them a lot. Some day I hope to drop my land-line and eliminate them from my life.

Cingular has proven to generally be alright. To date, they have failed to screw things up in a major way. Still, one thing annoys me about them. They spam me.

It's not junk email spam, but it's actually more annoying. My cell phone is a relatively sacred communications device. Not everyone has my number, and only a few of those who do have implied permission to call me in non-emergency situations. When my phone rings, I get a text message or receive a voice mail, it's probably something I want to hear about.

About 5 months after getting my phone, I had a missed call from a number I didn't recognize, then a subsequent voicemail.

"Hi, Rich, this is Bob with Cingular, I just wanted to let you about Cingular's new roll-over plan, where you get to keep all the minutes you don't..."

This made me angry. I called Bob back and angrily told him not to call me again. Poor Bob, just doing his job.

A few days ago I got a text message:

"Cingular's new special rate plan lets you make international calls from your phone without extra..."

It can be debated whether this is really spam or not. Someplace Cingular has a database of customers, with their preferences indicating that I just love getting such messages. I still call it spam.

So, Cingular sends spam to their customers. To date, I'm not aware of any way to integrate a third-party anti-spam program into a cellular provider's text messaging system. Stopping automated voicemail spam seems quite reasonable, however in my case, I suspect an actual person called and left me the message.

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