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SMS Sabotage
I decided to wake up late
on a Sunday morning when a beep of an SMS alert on my mobile phone
woke me up. I annoyingly woke up to see a religious promotional quotation
which kept popping up at least 15-20 times a day for the last one month.
After an hour, I again got a message from the same number saying 30 bucks
have been deducted from my prepaid mobile connection for using their
premium service for the last month. This raised my frustration to its
boiling point.
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Spam text messages
are growing out of control raising questions as to how the marketing
companies catch hold of the database of millions of numbers. Messages
generally comprise of ring tone download offers, nonsensical cricket
quiz, insurance policies, bank loans, stock options, astrology and the
list is ruthlessly unending. These include some automated voice calls
as well, which keep coming until you pick up the call.
Generally this menace
rises exponentially on the weekends with a wake up call early in the
morning. Sometimes a glitch in the system causes the same message to
be received at least 4-5 times |
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These killer spam
messages are great business for the advertising companies as they are
fast, cheap and reach larger number of audience. These unsolicited
messages disturb people amidst meetings, family dinners, holidays and now
they started becoming a wake up call on a weekend as well. In many phones
the messages cannot be deleted until they are opened. Now-a-days any
electronics goods bought in the market comes in a package deal. One has to
give details of the mobile number and give them permission to bother with
all the unwanted promotional offers, new deals and services offered
by the company. The height of torture is reached when subscribers like me
have to not only painstakingly delete dozens of junk SMSes but also pay
from the pocket for going through the headache.
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Fast growing SMS spam
is the biggest threat to the service providers as low cost internet
portals allow SMS messages to be sent on a lot at a very low cost in
no time. So, how to filter and kill SMS spam is the question in every
users mind. I had to immediately block all the messages from the
number and de-activate the so called premium service being offered to
me. I called up my service providers toll-free number, lodged a
complaint against the mobile number and asked him to block all the
messages from the number. But in some other cases the messages are
sent from a series of numbers and it is difficult to track the sender.
All the tele-marketing
messages can be blocked by asking the service provide to provide
the facility of Do Not Disturb, generally called DND by most of the
service providers. |
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But, this has the risk of
blocking some relevant marketing messages as well. In some high end mobile
phones, Spam Managers can be installed which filter the messages and block
SPAM to some extent.
Till
the technology of filtering SPAM messages catches up and become available
to the common man, base model phone users like you and me need to be ready
to give away weekend sleep to a junk message.
Contributing Writer
- Surya Kumari Govindu
A vivacious reader and writer looking forward to making it a profession.
skgovindu@yahoo.com
Note:
The opinions expressed in this article are that of the writer.
www.contentwriter.in is not responsible for the independent
views of the writer.
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