After a tired day at work, as soon as you sit the sack and begin to snore, the sms ‘ping’ wakes you up. You panic wondering what kind of an emergency it could be only to find smses like, Do you want to enjoy an authentic Thai massage? Are you in need of a credit card? Are you interested in downloading pictures of “hot” models? The number of such annoying smses and calls from unknown numbers are endless.
Despite the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) making the Do Not Disturb (DND) guidelines more effective and revamping the registration norms for the telemarketers, the irritating calls and messages announcing “bumper lottery wins” and slashes rates for products continue to haunt the consumers and invade their privacy.
Cyber experts call for stringent measures to curb this menace and appeal to TRAI to impose heavy penalties on violators. The move to effectively regulate unsolicited commercial calls and messages was successful initially, but these have gradually come back into the picture again and literally drive mobile users up the wall.
“I was so glad when they implemented the DND concept last year but now the situation is back to square one where I keep getting annoying texts from weird numbers that sell products and services. Sometimes the calls come in at odd hours and these calls just put anyone in a bad mood instantly,” laments Girish Nair, an event manager.
Elaborating on methods to put an end to such calls, J. Prasanna, vice-president of the Cyber Society of India says that the government should be stricter in implementing such norms and penalise those behind it.