"Die you 1069" by SMS Spam Manager

For over 2 or 3 months now, I have been frustrated, bothered, angry, and all because of SMS. A certain company keeps on sending me silly and stupid messages in arabic that go mostly on this template: "show your love to your sweetheart with a nice poem, send T3 to 1069", and since I'm neither in love nor in a relationship, it's seriously frustrating. Not that I would actually follow their strategy if I was, but I wouldn't probably be as annoyed as I am now. So a couple of weeks ago, I said (or more likely yelled) "NO MOOOOOORE", hit www.handango.com and typed SMS in the search box. I fell on a couple of results, one of which was SMS Spam Manager by Webgate. Downloaded the trial and here I went. 3 minutes was all it took, from downloading the trial to getting it to work in the background and forgetting about it. Really simple. Really efficient.

SMS Spam Manager runs in the background and can show you an icon on the main screen right below the network coverage, option that can be changed in the preferences.

It presents 3 windows. In the Mode window, you choose your rule setting (allow all, block all, allow phonebook, block blacklist) and you can view how many SMS have been allowed or blocked since the last time you opened the app. In the Rules window, you see all blacklist rules and you can add a new one by telephone number, prefix number and text match. You can't say there is a certain SMS type you can't block with those options! In the Log window, you can read the blocked SMS and delete them.

What I like about SMS Spam Manager is that it does what it needs to do, neetly and very simply. No bells and whistles. The indicator it shows on the main screen lets me check very quickly and make sure it's running. The settings are exactly what you would expect them to be in this kind of application. The autorun option is flawless, no matter how your phone was turned off : battery removal, normal turn off, reboot by an app, crashed then rebooted.

What I hate about it is that it shows in the task manager (long menu keypress) which is annoying. There should be a way to make it invisible, especially when the main screen icon is set on. While they're at it, there should be a way to multiple select items in the log. I'm too picky I guess but it's just to say that no app is perfect ;)

Seriously, if you are flooded by spam SMS, just click through to SMS Spam Manager. I guarantee that in less than 5 minutes, your app will be up and running, and spam will be a thing of the past. Just once in a week, open the app, check the log, delete.