A network of digital advocates said today that it is the public’s widespread complaints against spam messages led to the decline of scam and spam texts.
Digital Pinoys national campaigner Ronald Gustilo said that the outrage aired by the public against unscrupulous texts is what pushed the government to take action against the proliferation of scam and spam texts and that the SIM registration law has nothing to do with it.
“The drastic decline of spam texts cannot not be attributed to the SIM registration law. Credit should be given to the public outcry which pushed the government to act on the problem by blocking text messages with URLs.”
It can be recalled that the National Telecommunications Commission ordered all telcos to block text messages containing clickable URLs.
Gustilo said that the effect of SIM registration law will not be felt until SIMs used by senders of scam and spam texts are not yet deactivated.
“Supposedly, there should be no deactivation yet due to the SIM registration law. So if the National Telecommunications Commission is saying that the operation of scammers and spammers declined because their SIMs were blocked, it is because telcos blocked them. Let’s keep in mind that all SIMs activated prior to the effectivity of the SIM registration law will work, even if unregistered, until the last day of SIM registration.”
Gustilo said that the rapid decline of spam and scam texts proves that the SIM registration law is not needed to curb spamming and scamming using text messages.
“Our Telcos have the technology to flag SIMs being used for spamming and scamming. That is why they were able to block millions of spam and scam texts and that is also why a huge number of SIMs used for these activities were blocked. We don’t need the SIM registration law to do that. We just need our government agencies like NTC to direct telcos to do such.”
