TruSMS: A trustworthy SMS spam control system based on trust management

Abstract The fast growth of mobile networks has greatly enriched our life by disseminating information and providing communications at any time and anywhere. However, at the same time, when people gather and exchange useful information, they also receive unwanted data and contents, such as spam and unsolicited commercial advertisements. SMS (Short Message Service) spam is one typical example of unwanted contents, which has caused a serious problem to mobile users by intruding their devices, occupying device memories and irritating the users. More critically, some of these fraudulent messages deceive users and cause them incalculable loss. SMS spam control has become a crucial issue that impacts the further success of mobile networks. A number of researches have been conducted to control unwanted contents or traffic, some are based on trust and reputation mechanisms. But the literature still lacks an effective solution for SMS spam control. In this paper, we present the design and implementation of an SMS spam control system named TruSMS based on trust management. It can control SMS spam from its source to destinations according to trust evaluation by analyzing spam detection behaviors and SMS traffic data. We evaluate TruSMS performance under a variety of intrusions and attacks with a prototype system implementation. The result shows that TruSMS is effective with regard to accuracy, efficiency and robustness, which imply its trustworthiness.