Apple’s iMessage, one of the most widely used messaging services in the world, has been found to harbour 30pc of all mobile spam messages, according to spam analysts.
The service which allows iPhones to send messages to each other has become the go-to service for users looking to bypass traditional networks who charge for each message. Now it appears that it hasn’t escaped the power of malicious parties who are using the service to pollute people’s phones, Wired reported.
According to Tom Landesman of Cloudmark, their first encounter with a spam iMessage was as early as last year when they came across a spam message attempting to flog fake designer handbags. Their estimates put the spam message and others like it at the 30pc of all mobile spam messages mark, and rising.
As iMessage is not only restricted to iPhones, people with multiple Apple devices are also being harassed by messages of fake Ray-Ban and Oakley sunglasses. According to Landesman, this makes the service the most ideal medium to have spam messages seen.
Speaking to Wired, he said, “It’s almost like a spammer’s dream. With four lines of code, using Apple scripts, you can tell your Mac machine to send message to whoever they want.”
The biggest worry perhaps for users is that there really is no solution to stopping the messages, as Apple has yet to introduce any successful means of blocking them, bar reporting the individual senders or in a more drastic solution, disabling the iMessage app entirely.
iMessage image via Shutterstock
