Take Control Over your SMSes: A Real-World Evaluation of a Mobile-based Spam SMS Filtering System

In developing countries, Short Messaging Service (SMS) is one of the most widely used and cheapest modes of communication. Hence, this medium is often exploited by advertising companies to reach masses. The unsolicited (spam) SMSes consume user attention and have become a reason of annoyance for most of the mobile phone users, as not many of them use the information from these SMSes. We conducted a three phase study to understand the scale of SMS spam problem and to propose technological measures to curb it. First, we conducted a survey among 458 participants in India to understand general perceptions about spam SMSes, user preferences and requirements. Ninety seven percent of the survey participants admitted that they are quite annoyed with the burst of spam SMSes and lack of appropriate technological or regulatory solutions. Next, we designed and implemented a mobile based application SMSAssassin, which can filter spam SMSes using content based machine learning techniques and user generated customized rules. And last, we conducted a user study of this application with twenty three participants who used the application in real world for a month. Results show that a mobile based solution can effectively filter spam SMSes and the application can be usable too.