UNSOLICITED SMS: Protect consumers, fine offenders

THE Consumers Association of Penang (CAP) calls on the Information, Communications and Culture Ministry to take action against the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) for failing to play its role as a regulatory body for multimedia matters.

This call is made in view of the rising number of complaints made by consumers against content providers (CP) for ripping off consumers through their various modus operandi.

It is bad enough that multimedia users are subjected to spam, spoofing, fraud and so on to rip them off, but when licensed entities also rip consumers off by breaching the regulations, which they promise to abide when applying for their licences, it becomes intolerable.

MCMC has so far issued about 800 licences to CPs. It states that it "implements the self-regulatory regime, whereby it is the obligation fof the licensees to ensure compliance to relevant laws and its subsidiary legislation".

Hence, "the licensed CP is obligated to ensure services offered under its short code are in full compliance with the mandatory standards and any non-compliance may lead to a penalty of up to RM100,000, or jail, or both".

However, this is far from true, as endless complaints about CPs have been received, reflecting the inadequacy of enforcement by MCMC. It cannot shift the burden of complying with the law onto CPs, citing "self-regulation".

Because MCMC's enforcement does not inflict enough pain on CPs and the industry generally, it gives rise to an attitude of total disregard for the law. This results in large numbers of consumers being at the mercy of CPs.

Consumers complain of receiving endless streams of unsolicited SMSes, goading them to send activation codes for services they do not need or want. Many of these are misleading and in breach of the mandatory standards for the Provision of Mobile Content Services (Determination No. 4 of 2009).

MCMC claims it carries out monitoring internally. If so, it should be able to discover the breaches and take action. But the complaints we receive do not reflect this.

CASE 1 -- A customer of a service provider monitored the unsolicited SMSes he received from December 2009 to July last year (excluding missed calls, billing and from contacts). Of the 25 unsolicited SMSes, 96 per cent were confirmed unlawful by the MCMC, with 68 per cent being in breach of one to four provisions of the mandatory standards;

CASE 2 -- A customer of another service provider recorded receiving 56 unsolicited SMSes from June to December 2010. MCMC confirmed 91 per cent were "non-compliant" and 3.5 per cent in breach of the standard. The customer asked the service provider to stop sending the SMSes, and the service provider agreed. However, within days, the SMSes started coming in again. Between January last year and February this year, another 64 unsolicited SMSes were recorded. The MCMC confirmed 40 per cent were not compliant and 56 per cent were in breach of standards.

Consumers are particularly annoyed with CPs that keep sending them unsolicited SMSes and misleading ones pestering them to accept content they do not want.

Many consumers have complained about being entrapped by devious SMS messages sent to them by CPs. Some messages direct consumers to send certain responses, others give the impression there is no payment involved, or they have something to redeem. When they do so, they unwittingly subscribe to receive certain content for which they will have to pay. And payment is not cheap -- up to RM5 per content SMS sent to the consumer (perhaps even more). And the consumer has no control of how many times a day the content may be sent to him, but he pays for every time it is sent.

In one case, a consumer received 510 SMSes in five days, each costing RM3. It was blamed on a technical error in the CP's system.

We have also received complaints of CPs offering free trials of some content, such as an e-newspaper, for a short period and without confirming with the customer, migrating him to a paid subscription.

What it means is that the CPs do not fear MCMC. Investigating possible breaches of the standards is taking too long. When this happens, consumers feel that the MCMC is either inefficient or favouring the CPs.

MCMC's explanation is "lack of consumer knowledge on mobile content services, especially on the registration keywords and its business model that led consumers to unknowingly subscribe to the service".

How are consumers expected to have the same knowledge as the CP? Obviously, CPs are taking advantage of the consumers' ignorance of technical knowledge.

The telecommunication industry is a gold mine. As such, MCMC should be very strict. The maximum penalty should be imposed for the first offence and termination of licence for the second. MCMC must not blame consumers for their lack of technical knowledge for the problems they have with CPs.

The problem is caused by the service providers misappropriating customers' personal data given to them in confidence for obtaining their service. Surreptitiously obtaining their customers' "consent" to share the data through a statement hidden in micro-print in the lengthy agreement is unethical and against the spirit of the Personal Data Protection Act.

The government should put a stop to this passing on of a person's personal data to be used by others.

In view of the above, CAP calls on the ministry to immediately take action and to review the functions and ineffectiveness of the MCMC in playing its role in protecting consumers.