Cloudmark has commissioned a study to analyze awareness and interaction with spam

Nov 15, 2012 15:59 GMT  ·  By

A study commissioned by Cloudmark has found that although most UK mobile phone users (92%) believe that their carriers should offer them a way to report spam messages, 72% of them don’t know if such a service is set in place by the operator.

Other interesting figures show that 63% of users usually ignore messages, while only 10% take the time to report them to the carrier.

Even more worrying is the fact that 31% erroneously believe that by responding to SMS spam with “STOP,” the unwanted texts would not be sent anymore.

Experts warn that this is even worse than ignoring the message, because by texting the spammers, users are confirming that their phone number is valid.

By reporting spam messages to GSMA’s Spam Reporting Service, which is powered by Cloudmark, users are actually helping their mobile operators block unwanted texts.

Cloudmark uses the data to make comprehensive reports that help carriers block offending phone numbers and reduce spam volume.

In the UK, spam messages should be forwarded to 7726 (SPAM on the keypad), 87726 for Vodafone (VSPAM), or 37726 for Three.