The spam game - it's time for networks to respond

I got an unsolicited SMS the other night at 4am. Not a fun time to have your personal space invaded, I think you will agree. Come to think of it, I seem to be getting quite a lot of these unsolicited messages these days. What is going on and why is my digital privacy being invaded so easily and without any recourse to the sender or the delivery? 

Just to get things straight, let’s not call them 'unsolicited messages' - let’s rather use the slightly more appropriate word of SPAM. I believe the word better reflects the frustrations of consumers when they get unwanted sms’s from companies and other organisations. 

Ten years ago I remember receiving a lot of spam in another format, namely the two e-mail accounts I had. It was a major problem for the slowly emerging online industry and was exacerbated by the limited bandwidth that we experienced using dial-up connections. Fortunately the issue of e-mail spam has largely disappeared, or at least become manageable on a day-to-day basis, given changes that were forced on the industry. Yet the relative harmony I now experience in my e-mail inbox has got me thinking about the way the Internet service providers (or ISP’s) were then held accountable by consumer privacy legislation. Industry bodies were forced to change the way they handled, delivered or rejected spam e-mail messages. My poor inbox got outside assistance to prevent it from being bombarded by thousands of e-mails promoting pornography, credit card companies, insurance companies and an assortment of Nigerian 419 scams.

So what is different with the mobile service providers - aka the mobile networks? 

Why are they not held responsible for filtering messages that come through to my sms inbox? ISP’s were forced to be the guardian on e-mail messaging which required them to develop systems and solutions to ensure that my privacy was better protected. The current increase in mobile spam marketing is myopic, invasive (illegal?) and something that needs to be managed (read stopped) if the industry is to mature and reach its potential of a mass medium that digitally connects 90 per cent of South Africa’s population.    

Chris Rolfe

CEO, Mobilitrix