The return of the football season – and particularly England's Premier League – has seen dramatic weekend spikes in SMS betting spam according to Cloudmark's latest 'Global Messaging Threat Report'. " Each weekend, as clubs face off with one another," explains Cloudmark, "mobile subscribers face off against bandwagon spikes in SMS spam attempting to part excited fans from their money."
On Saturday 14 September, for example, with Liverpool riding high, 52% of all reported UK SMS spam related to betting sites. Typical was, "The Premiership is back! Get up to £50 FREE BET on the weekends Football with [REDACTED]. Click [REDACTED] Today! text STOP to 66644 to opt-out."
But despite the football spikes, payday loan spam remains the biggest UK problem. Payday loans is a £2 billion industry now coming under increasing scrutiny within the UK. It has boomed over the last few years and largely falls outside of current UK financial rules. The result is that some firms have offered small loans with massive interest rates, and bullying practices if the borrower fails to meet the repayment schedule. It is the perfect market for spam: high returns, little oversight, and more than a few unscrupulous operators.
"However," notes Cloudmark, "the UK payday loan market has been put under a microscope this year due to questions regarding their unscrupulous terms." The effect may provide some hope. Firstly, the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) earlier this year began an audit of the top 50 companies, and gave them 12 weeks to correct various issues. Nineteen of those 50 companies have since stopped offering payday loans – and four simply stopped trading altogether.
"As so many lenders exit the market, it wouldn't be inappropriate to surmise an approaching drop in payday loan spam," suggests Cloudmark; adding that it hasn't happened yet. But there is more hope for the spam recipient. The OFT referred the matter to the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), and the FCA has now announced a raft of measures it plans to impose to improve the whole consumer credit market.
"The FCA oversight will begin in the spring of 2014 with, hopefully, implications for payday loan SMS spammers," suggests Cloudmark. The FCA is particularly concerned about payday loan advertising targeting young adults and students. "It is plausible that the FCA may see the SMS medium as a method for targeting these demographics and subsequently take action against these spammers in the spring."
The collision between these three UK spam factors – football, betting, and payday loans – is coincidentally highlighted in today'sDaily Mirror: footballers are taking out payday loans to help fund gambling addictions. “We’ve had several sportsmen who have got caught up in taking out payday loans in order to place bets,” Colin Bland, chief executive of charity Sporting Chance, told Radio 5 Live's Nicky Campbell.