The inevitable and unwanted result of Short Messenger Service (SMS) and Multimedia Message Service (MMS) messaging has been the proliferation of Spam (unwanted e-mails) and Scam (malicious attacks) on mobile handsets.

OpenMIND Networks recently introduced a solution to help wireless carriers address these growing problems

Its Anti-Spam/Anti-Scam (NAS) product protects by detecting and blocking any SMS message a carrier chooses through what the company asserts are sophisticated automatic and manual network analysis techniques that identify both Spam and Scam messages.

These processes include heuristic traffic analysis tools to spot suspicious "one-to-many" traffic and "repeated content" traffic. Among OpenMIND NAS's many other features is the ability to detect spammers who "fly below radar" by using long periods between attacks.

Anyone with an e-mail account knows Spam consists of unsolicited and unwelcome (often Adult) messages. Scam, on the other hand, is a bit more complicated to define.

Scammers set out to deceive people by either changing the settings on their cell phones and smartphones or tricking them into taking an action that'll cause them to be defrauded.

Since the initiation of downloads or notifications are (for the most part) initiated by SMS, most phones automatically download after receiving an SMS notification. An unintended consequence is the simplification of scammers capacity to initiate downloads of viruses, etc.

Well-known examples of Scam include the Trojan attacks on smartphones we've reported on over the past year. These types of handsets are particularly vulnerable to Scam because of how sophisticated they are compared to standard cell phones.

With the number of smartphones predicted to grow astronomically over the next few years, there's going to be a lot more phones for scammers to target.

OpenMIND's director of business development Pat Flynn told SmartPhoneToday, "It is expected that 17 percent of Mobile Phones worldwide will be smartphones by 2007. That is a few hundred million devices that are more vulnerable to Spam and Scam compared to today's more basic phones."

Another example of Scam is when the WAP settings on a phone are changed through an "OTA (over-the-air) control SMS" to use a Premium Rate Circuit Switched number instead of GPRS for WAP browsing.

Usually, consumers don't realize they've been scammed until their next (much higher than usual) wireless bill. To OpenMIND, this type of Scam is the equivalent of Desktop PC "Modem Hijacking."

It is not just Spam and Scam that's a problem for carriers.

A related issue is off-network content providers that ping end-users with SMS text notifications and MMS push notifications that deliver ringtones, graphics, and wallpapers directly to customers; bypassing operator revenue streams on the mobile network.

Even though this affects the bottom-line, protecting subscribers remains their chief concern of most operators.

As OpenMIND's Flynn said to us, "Mobile Operators won't want their customers to have to live with concerns about being ripped off by scammers and will be investing to protect them from the potential threat."