With local network operators enjoying six-figure revenues a day from SMS spammers who use their services to spread unwanted messages, the operators seemingly do not bother to curb the phenomenon to protect their lucrative source of income.Some 9.8 million spam SMS are sent to Vietnamese mobile phone users on a daily basis, which helps the network operators rake in an enormous VND3 billion (US$143,000) a day, and $4.3 million a month, a recent report by Internet security company Bkav Corporation reveals. While the unwanted messages have greatly annoyed the recipients, the network operators not only refuse to tighten management to discourage the spammers, but also launch services to facilitate the bombardment. Viettel, MobiFone, and Vinaphone, the country’s largest mobile operators, are all offering services enabling users to send SMS in bulk at low costs. Viettel’s SMSList allows user to send one same SMS to as many as 30 subscribers of the same network with a cost of only VND3,000, or VND100 per SMS compared to the normal rate of VND200-500. Vinaphone also has SMS Group with just the same feature and charge the same as the military-run company. MobiFone meanwhile offers MobiList service, enabling a user to send an SMS to a list of ten other MobiFone subscribers at only VND150 a message. The three above services do not set any limit on the number of recipients their users are allowed to text to. This has opened wide door for the spammers to bombard hundreds unwanted messages while having to pay only half of the normal fee. “The network operators benefit from the spam SMS, and we also benefit from fully exploiting their services,” the director of an ad service company said on condition of anonymity. Any individual or organization wishing to spread their ads via SMS can simply buy a new discounted SIM card to be able to bombard the spam to thousands of users a day, he said. “Even when authorities detect your spamming, all you need to do is to discard the SIM and no one will ever know who really owns the SIM,” he revealed.No worry Some SIM card sellers even use their registered mobile phone accounts to spam ad messages on their products without a worry about anonymity. “You will never have your mobile phone account blocked when using the network operator’s own service to send the messages,” said Trung, a SIM seller in Ho Chi Minh City. Nguyen Thanh Hai, deputy director of the Vietnam Computer Emergency Response Team, said it is not simple to curb spam SMS as it will affect the interest and revenue of the service providers. “The spam SMS mostly advertise digital services (ring tone and game download) that will again benefit the network operators, so they just turn a blind eye to the issue to continue raking huge profits,” he concluded.