Spam is already plaguing some wireless devices in the U.S., despite claims at a spam forum in Washington, D.C., last week that the nation was behind others at least in that one type of unwanted commercial e-mail.

PDAs that allow users to download their e-mail, such as BlackBerry devices, have the same problems with spam as "wired" computers, but have the added problems of cellular-phone spam, because PDA users may be paying per-minute charges to download the junk e-mail.

"If you're getting spam at the office, you're getting a second copy on your BlackBerry," said Frank Gillman, director of technology at Allen Matkins, a law firm based in Los Angeles. "The last thing I want to do is have my pager going off with a message and have it be about mortgage rates or penis enlargement."

Most members of a wireless spam panel at a U.S. Federal Trade Commission forum last week said that spam on cell phones has not plagued the U.S. to the same level as it has in Japan. Text-messaging on cell phones, using the SMS protocol, is becoming more popular in the U.S., panelists said, but few U.S. cell phone users have experienced problems with commercial messages coming directly to their cell phones.

However, Albert Gidari, a partner with the Perkins Coie law firm, noted during the panel that the distinctions between computers and wireless devices are disappearing, and it's difficult to separate wireless spam from the other stuff when thinking about ways to fight it. For Gillman, wireless spam has been a problem since his firm started using pagers in October 2000. At one point, he was receiving 70 to 100 spam e-mails to his office account each day.

"If your pager or your PDA device is going off that often, it becomes useless to you," Gillman said. "It stops being the critical warning, and you basically turn off (the device), leave it in your briefcase and check it periodically, which goes against the whole reason to get one. We were getting so much junk mail, it was defeating all the money we were investing in the BlackBerry."

A representative of BlackBerry maker Research In Motion wasn't immediately available for comment Friday.

It's not all bad news for Gillman and his co-workers. The law firm has been using a spam filter from FrontBridge Technologies for about two years, and the spam in Gillman's in-box has gone down less than five a day. "Now, if people get spam, it's almost like they're shocked that they get it," Gillman said of his co-workers. "It's like they notice it, instead of it being a fact of daily life."

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.