07 July, 2010

SMS spam in the UAE finally coming to an end

Mobile phone users in the UAE can now opt out of annoying text message spam, after a ruling from the Telecommunications Regulations Authority (TRA).

Prompted by the anger of millions of mobile phone customers at their days being interrupted by unwanted text message offers of reduced prices at the local supermarket, membership deals at the country club and, perhaps most annoying of all, a bargain text-messaging plan from their mobile service provider, the TRA has brought in a regulation that users must be able to block text spam.

Mohammed al Ghanim, the director general of the regulator, said: “After receiving many complaints from customers about random marketing SMS messages, the TRA decided to introduce this new policy to curb the annoyance such messages cause,” said

After the announcement from the TRA, Etisalat said its customers could opt out of spam messages by texting “b etisalat” to 1011 without paying a penalty. Customers of du can text a blank message to 5293 to block all mobile spam.


Best part of article:
"It is not known whether either company intends to publicise this latest initiative with an SMS marketing campaign."

More here: Block on mobile phone spam for UAE users (The National)

2 comments:

Kyle said...

I guess I must be one of those fortunate' that's not plagued by this SMS spam.

However, TRA, if you're reading this and I know you are, do something about the spam & junk that gets past your friggin' worthless proxy and into my mailbox.

Anonymous said...

Texting “b etisalat” to 1011 doesn't work. I did so and received the next SMS spam the very next day. And the day after...

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