First and foremost, SMS scam is a crime punishable under
There are precedents of punitive actions taken against rogue SMS-delivered Content Providers evident from industry regulator MCMC's reprimand against fraudulent operators.
April 9, 2007, MCMC dispatched a letter to Sandip Das, Morten Lundal and Shazali Ramli -- the CEOs of Maxis (Malaysian Mobile Services Sdn Bhd), DiGi and Celcom, respectively -- in response to consumer complaints on fraudulent SMS Mobile Content Services, particularly on the issues of SMS Spoofing and Short Code Masking.
Below is a simple diagram to illustrate the modus operandi how multiple parties are involved in the SMS scam.
Maxis installed the Maxis Anti-Spam Platform. This works as a firewall that blocks out Spam/Hoax SMS based on keyword identification. This firewall stops unsolicited SMS from reaching our customer base.
Since the installation the Anti Spam Platform, an average of a million Spam/Hoax SMS per month have been blocked from reaching our customers. Offenders often look for ways to circumvent the system, and sometimes, some of these messages slip past our Anti-Spam blocking mechanism. Maxis investigate all complaints and add all new Hoax SMS cases to our Anti-Spam Platform’s database for future auto-blocking.
In the meantime, Maxis advice their customers do not respond to any unsolicited SMS that offer “too good to be true” prizes for contests or promotions from established Malaysian companies, especially if you did not sign up for such contests or promotions in the first place. Usually, these SMS feature a foreign phone number for the recipient to respond to, with a non-Malaysian telephone country code prefix. This is one indication that such an SMS could not have originated from Maxis/Hotlink. Customers are urged to not call these numbers.
Example of SMS Scam:
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