Several reports came out this week saying that unwanted text messages, or spam, sent to the mobile phone is on the rise. Quoting a report by mobile security firm Cloudmark, The Register reported that China and Southeast Asia was among the worst countries for mobile spam—in fact, the average Chinese subscriber receives between six and 10 mobile spam messages a day, and in India, some operators measured levels at about 30 percent.

The study said abuse is increasing because of a number of trends, including the general growth of messaging, the cost of delivering a messaging is decreasing, and advertising and marketing is on the rise. In a separate report released by security vendor McAfee, it said mobile users will face annoying and unwanted messages just like they do on the PC, except that a majority of mobile devices do not have any filtering tools to deal with it, according to InternetNews.

The threat, however, varies by region, and is based on whether carriers allow test messages to be sent by email. In the U.S., Cloudmark said 25 percent of all messages sent to mobile devices when sent from e-mail are spam, according to bmighty.com. As mobile advertising, mobile banking, and other new uses catch on, Cloudmark expects attackers to get even more sophisticated.