Globe Telecom recently launched a campaign to address the continuing proliferation of unsolicited promotional materials sent through SMS.
By providing subscribers several channels to report text spams, the company hopes to help reduce or eliminate such practices. Under the program, subscribers may report the number, the exact message, and the time and date the text spam was received via the Globe website through Talk2Globe Chat; send a message through Globe Contact Form and by tweeting @Talk2GLOBE on Twitter. Subscribers can report the number, the exact message, and the time and date the text spam was received.
Yoly Crisanto, Globe head of corporate communications, said numbers that are reported to be source of text spams are first sent warnings and those that are persistent source of text spams are deactivated from the service.
While the company takes utmost care in safeguarding data, records and documents gathered in the process of conducting business, subscribers should also take caution in writing down any personal information including mobile phone numbers, she said.
“Anyone who has access to numbers can create a database. Collection of numbers can come from registration to events and websites, prepaid loading from variety stores, to text validation of mobile apps, and more. Major sources can be mobile marketing companies, app and web developers, load merchants, private and public establishments as well as through mobile generator programs,” she explained.
The Philippines' National Telecommunications Commission had previously issued a memorandum circular prohibiting any unauthorized broadcast messaging services. The memorandum provides that any individual or business entity that wants to send broadcast messages needs to register first with the NTC for authorization. Legitimate text blasts approved by the regulating agency are properly identified and do not carry 11-digit numbers.
“Our valued subscribers can rest assured that we treat customer numbers with utmost confidentiality in line with the company’s security policy,” Crisanto said. “We are aware and take note that spam text messages continue to cause inconvenience to many of our subscribers. We want to assure our customers that we are committed in our drive against text spams.”