Learn about what phone spam is, its impact, and how to effectively deal with unwanted and unsolicited calls to protect yourself from potential harm. What is spam on the phone?

Unfortunately, it is very easy to get into a spammers’ database. There are constant leaks of personal information, and the companies themselves do not hesitate to sell their clients’ databases. That is why many advertising messages come to your email and SMS. Or, even worse, you start getting calls with an annoying imposition of services. You will learn more about the types of spam and methods of protection from it from our material.

What is spam

Spam is unwanted and annoying messages that are sent to users without their consent. They may contain advertisements for products, online casinos or, worse, malicious links. 

Types of spam

Usually, a distinction is made between text and voice spam. The former includes various messages and letters sent to the phone, social networks, messengers or email. The latter are represented by calls and voice messages.

As noted above, the traditional goals of spammers are advertising goods and services, as well as attempts to lure out the user’s personal data. 

There are frequent cases when fraudsters disguise themselves as banks or online stores. On their behalf, letters with advantageous offers and discounts are sent to future victims. Usually, such messages contain links to fictitious sites that require entering personal data. In most cases, this leads to the theft of confidential information or even funds in the account.

A spam bomber is also often used – a special utility or script that automatically sends a huge number of SMS or letters to a specific number or e-mail. Usually, intruders try to block the recipient’s device/mail or overload the cellular network in this way..

Spam in social networks and messengers

Spam on social networks 

Unfortunately, social networks are not protected from spam from unknown users or communities. These can be personal messages, comments under a wall post, and messages in a chat. The content is standard for spam: from advertising various services and requests for help to offers to join a group or follow a suspicious link. 

To avoid negative consequences, it is recommended to blacklist senders, not open an incomprehensible letter, or better yet, delete it. It would not be a bad idea to make your profile private or at least limit the circle of people who can write to you.

Spam in messengers

Spam in Telegram, Viber or WhatsApp is no different from that in social networks. At any moment, you may receive an incomprehensible advertisement, an unknown user may write with a job offer, or a link to a casino may appear on the channel. Usually, automated scripts or bots are used for such mailings.  

The main way to combat them is to block the sender. There is also a function to send a complaint to the message to send the user to the spam block. This protection measure limits the capabilities of the specified account.

Why spam is dangerous

Personal data leak

If you follow embedded links or download a malicious file from a message, your personal data may end up in the hands of intruders. This includes not only passwords, but also bank details, document numbers, and account access. There is also a high chance of downloading a virus to your smartphone with the same consequences. 

Losing money 

Spam is often used to advertise various products, goods, services, tariffs, promotions and much more. Therefore, there is a risk that you will be forced to buy an unnecessary option, or you will buy something that you did not need at all. All this leads to financial losses. 

Loss of personal time

Sorting through and deleting a ton of spam emails and SMS is a tedious task. It takes time that could be spent much more productively. 

Losing important messages

Really important messages can easily get lost in the endless stream of spam. Moreover, if you are used to deleting accumulated garbage in bulk, there is a high chance that an important letter will be there.  

Damaged reputation

If a company abuses advertising mailings, its reputation will be damaged very quickly.

Anti-Spam Measures

Basic tips

Unfortunately, in today’s reality it is impossible to completely protect yourself from spam. But if you follow simple rules, the probability of becoming a victim of fraudsters will be reduced to a minimum. Therefore:

Spam folder in email

Modern email clients automatically create a Spam folder when an email account is created. The system sends there the emails it considers unwanted and malicious. In addition, the user can set up filters so that messages from specific senders do not clutter the Inbox folder.  

Third party applications

If annoying calls and SMS are completely annoying, then use specialized utilities. Such applications are able to recognize unwanted calls and block them. The best in this segment are Kaspersky Who Calls, Truecaller, NumBuster and the caller ID from Yandex.