Mobile spam in Europe-study finds worrying trends

The volume of spam received by European mobile phone users has risen by almost 25 per cent in the past 12 months. This is the key finding of a new study covering five major European markets carried out by comScore M:Metrics on behalf of Airwide Solutions.

The study reported that, although some mobile operators are leading the way in deploying anti-spam technology, the number of European users receiving unwanted text messages is growing at 21.3 per cent year-on-year. French mobile users are apparently the worst sufferers with the number of spam messages containing mobile worms and viruses they receive increasing at a rate of 61.3 per cent every year.

The growing ownership of smartphones is also a major concern as many subscribers store sensitive work and personal data on their phones which could be at risk from attack. However, there is some good news. The study believes that the growing spam threat means that mobile operators could have a significant opportunity to play a strategic role in protecting their subscribers by deploying new security solutions across their networks.

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