It was great hearing about this new software that ruthlessly kills unwanted text messages delivered to your cellphone by sundry real estate agents, spa and gym owners, coaching classes and who not! The fact that it is a software made specifically for Indian cellphone users in mind makes it even more interesting. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India estimates that 100 million spam messages go around the country every day!

Ponnurangam Kumaraguru and colleagues at the Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology in New Delhi have developed ‘SMSAssassin’ that uses the crowdsourcing spam marker method to identify spam.

Since it is not as easy to identify SMS spam, the crowdsourced spam markers — spam keywords collected over a period of time from such text messages — are a good way to track them. The researchers plan to put these markers on a central server or by creating a distributed network via Bluetooth. This means during Christmas or New Year or Diwali, your phone can identify spam elements in the effusive ‘wish messages’ and react quickly to block them off. During quieter times, the most abused spam words will be the markers.

The software works for phones using Nokia’s Symbian operating system but will also be available for those with

Google Android and Windows Mobile soon.

Good riddance to bad text!