January 13, 2014. MegaFon specialists blocked about 1 billion spam texts, including scams and other illegal content ones, in 2013. Thanks to the mobile operator’s efforts, customers were protected against annoying ads that are so criticized only too justly, the company’s press service says.

‘A detailed analysis of the customer queries has shown that our customers have been receiving a huge amount of messages related to advertising drugs, sexual services, financial schemes and other dubious or outright illegal kinds of texts alongside regular ads.’

‘MegaFon experts block over 300,000 such texts every month. We can now see that the total amount of spam that actually makes it to MegaFon network is much lower, as is the number of customer complaints related to spam,’ says Fraud Prevention Director Sergey Khrenov.

‘The proactive stance taken by government institutions that support this idea is crucial to protecting mobile carriers’ subscribers from spam texts. The Russian Communications Ministry, Roskomnadzor, and the Federal Antimonopoly Service are all interested in and take part in fighting spam incoming from other operators’ network and from illegitimate phone numbers, which helped us to achieve these results. We do hope the State Duma hears Ruslan Gattarov’s draft bill on fighting spam texts very soon; this will help to effectively fight spam that comes from regular phone numbers,’ Khrenov explained.