India to curb SMS spam
Supreme Court urges government to crack down on mobile spam
The Supreme Court of India has urged the Indian government to introduce legal measures to crack down on unsolicited calls and SMS spam sent to mobile phone users.
The Court issued notices to the Government, mobile operators and multi-national banks on a public interest litigation which seeks a law to ban unsolicited SMS messages and calls to mobile phones.
The Supreme Court's notice cited the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (to which India is a signatory), which states that no one should be subjected to unlawful interference with his privacy. With India's mobile industry being one of the fastest growing in the world, its 95 million subscribers will welcome the suggestion of measures to curb unwanted calls and SMS spam.
Meanwhile, in the USA the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has published a list of more than 180 websites that transmit unsolicited email and SMS messages to cell phones.
Sites on the list have a 30-day grace period to cease sending the messages (unless recipients have given permission to receive them). If, at the end of the 30-day period, the sites have failed to stop sending unsolicited email and text messages, the senders could be fined up to $11,000 per violation.
8 February 2005
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