Overview

• Portable devices known as SMS blasters impersonate base stations, capture nearby phones, force downgrades to 2G, and push spoofed texts that bypass carrier filters.
• Switzerland’s cybersecurity agency warned that some units can hit all phones within about 1,000 meters, and a Bangkok incident reportedly sent roughly 100,000 messages per hour.
• Use has spread from Asia-Pacific into Western Europe and South America, with London police reporting seven seizures and a student jailed after being caught operating one.
• Mobile operators have blocked massive volumes of conventional scam texts this year—Virgin Media O2 cites more than 600 million in 2025—yet messages injected via blasters evade these controls.
• Security guidance highlights disabling 2G on phones where possible—supported on Android and via Apple’s Lockdown Mode—plus reporting suspicious texts and avoiding unknown links.