Sick of those losers from tuition centers or real estate agencies bombarding your cell phone with spam text messages? Well, those days may be over soon.
The Personal Data Protection Commission, acting under the Personal Data Protection Act has established a Do-Not-Call Registry which will be launched in January 2014.
And from December 2nd onwards, you can register your number with a national data base which will allow you to opt out of receiving those annoying SMS messages.
You may do so by going to dnc.gov.sg or send an SMS with the message “DNC” to the following numbers:
78772 for no voice calls, no text messages and no fax messages
78773 for no voice calls only
78771 for no text messages only
78771 for other options, like to de-register your earlier options.
You may also phone four toll-free numbers to register. (Numbers are on the PDPC website.)
Once you register, you can eventually expect unwanted sales pitches to end completely only after 30 days. (During this initial period, expect a 60-day delay though.)
This is because from January 2nd, companies will have to check the registry before spamming potential customers. They are required to submit the phone numbers of their potential customers for checking against the DNC database, and this takes time.
If I recall how past attempts at eliminating email spam has failed miserably, I am not too optimistic about the DNC thing, but I must admit, it’s early days yet.
So let’s wait and see.
“Two years from now, spam will be solved.” – Bill Gates, 2004.