Awareness mantra against spam calls

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) tightening rules to curb pesky calls and all unsolicited business promotion calls to consumers is a welcome move. Focused consumer awareness of the move is crucial to mount pressure on telecom service providers to take proactive action to enforce the rules. The telecom regulatory body has decided to impose a two-year telecom ban on any entity found making spam calls. TRAI directed that all the telecom resources of spammers be disconnected by their telecom service providers. Apart from blacklisting the spammer, the telecom service providers will also be required to share the information with other service providers, and all service providers will disconnect all the connections provided by them and blacklist them for two years. TRAI has also asked all service providers and their telemarketers to come forward and take effective measures to curb bulk communications using voice calls. The bulk calling technology allows business entities to deliver pre-recorded voice messages to thousands of customers on mobile or landline networks with just a few clicks. Similar deterrent measures in the past failed to curb spam calls, and mobile subscribers continued to be flooded with unsolicited business promotion calls. As these calls are made from ten-digit mobile numbers, it becomes difficult for a mobile subscriber to know if these are from a business entity and decide whether to receive or reject these calls. The subscriber comes to know that it is a spam or pesky call only after receiving it. Blocking the number is no solution, as the spammer keeps calling from different numbers. When the call is from a ten-digit mobile number, the mobile subscriber is usually inclined to pick it up, assuming that it could be a call from someone she or he knows, but the number may not be saved on the handset, or it could be an important call from a genuine person, not necessarily a relative or a friend. The TRAI mandates the registration of all businesses that want to send messages to mobile subscribers and a sender ID so that when SMS is delivered, the mobile subscriber can easily identify that it is from a registered business entity. It also emphasized that banks and other financial institutions make their business calls from numbers prefixed with dedicated series. These are technical details that are not known or understood by most mobile subscribers, and the majority of them are unable to differentiate between ten-digit numbers and numbers prefixed with any dedicated series. For them, every call on their mobile phone is a call from someone and needs to be answered. The awareness drive against pesky calls has failed to deliver the right message to a large number of mobile subscribers, due to which even after having come across campaigns cautioning against answering spam calls or pesky calls, they continued to be duped by spammers and troubled by unsolicited business calls. Telecom service providers will be able to initiate action as directed by TRAI against spammers only when a subscriber affected by spam calls lodges a complaint and brings it to their attention. Unregistered telemarketers continue to take advantage of a lack of awareness among mobile subscribers to keep calling from ten-digit numbers and push unsolicited business promotion, while fraudster gangs also continue to dupe unsuspecting mobile subscribers into divulging personal identification numbers and other secured information to syphon money from their bank accounts. Over 12 lakh spam call complaints against unregistered telemarketing callers are indicative of the increasing number of spam calls in the country. It is also reflective of more and more subscribers being aware of the importance of lodging complaints against spam calls, but compared to total telecom subscribers to the tune of 119 crore, the awareness is too little. Many subscribers who share on social media networks share their experience of becoming frustrated with receiving spam calls and how they simply ignore them, which allows the spammers to keep targeting new customers. The huge telecom subscriber base provides a lucrative business platform for unregistered telemarketers to push products and services. Finding the required number of gullible customers from among such huge telecom subscribers to mint money and sustain business is quite easy. The awareness among rural telecom subscribers is quite low as compared to urban subscribers, and they become easy targets for spammers. It is good to know that TRAI emphasized that there is an urgent need to take firm action on spammers, and all the service providers have promised to extend full support to TRAI in curbing the menace of spam calls. TRAI and service providers must undertake a massive awareness campaign among subscribers against spam calls and report those immediately for prompt action. The awareness messages need to be simple and easily understood by a layperson. Instead of a generic campaign message, step-by-step directions to identify spam calls made from ten-digit numbers will enable more subscribers to lodge complaints.