Have you received calls from people selling insurance,
offering loans, credit cards, plots, houses, astrological readings, jobs et al?
Have you received these calls repeatedly despite telling them that you are not
interested? Despite registering for DND (Do Not Disturb)? Have you ever tried
asking the tele-callers where they got your information from – only to get
roundabout responses essentially saying that they don’t know? Isn’t this the
most galling thing – ever?
This seems to be something that we face in India more than
anywhere else in the world. Are the cell phone companies selling the
information? Is it sundry websites?
There are no answers. Only more calls.
But it looks like the powers-that-be are taking this menace
a little more seriously. Initially Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI)
had introduced a DND option. Over the past few years that doesn’t seem to have
worked too well. Now TRAI is tightening the regulations. Companies have to register
with them to be able to make calls. Only the registered companies are going to
be allowed to make cold calls selling their wares to random folks. Besides
this, they also have to follow certain guidelines (including the DND request)
plus if there are complaints made about a company for cold-calling and they are
not registered, they have to pay a fine of Rs. 5,000/- per complaint.
What about the SMS’ then? Everyone with a mail ID has
certainly got lottery winnings and business offers in their mailboxes. You must
also have got mails from relatives (wives, sons, nephews, uncles etc.) of dead African
kings, clerks in banks with dormant accounts holding mesmerising sums of money
asking you to help them get the money out of whichever country they claim to be
from. You’ve got these, right? The very same ploy has now shifted to SMS’. The
same stories are now being sent on cell phones. If you haven’t yet got those
messages, it won’t be too long before you will.
While the TRAI effort sounds good it is not thorough. Besides,
it’s been almost two to three months since the new regulations have been
introduced but calls still come in – though, admittedly, the number has
reduced.
While it looks like the end of unsolicited calls is at an
end, I have always wondered how the telecallers get our cell phone numbers. Not
only do they have the numbers but they refer to the person answering the call
by name. It is likely that they have more details, like maybe, our addresses
also. This has been both, an irritant and a matter of great concern to me. If insurance companies and banks can get hold
of our information so easily, how easy it would be for someone with nefarious
purposes to not only get our information but also to hack into it and maybe
even thieve our identity! The thought lies uneasy in my head.
Identity theft is common enough in the Electronic Age. Add to that the possibility of tech-savvy individuals belonging to terrorist outfits. It means for no fault other than moving with the times, one can be compromised, framed and arrested for crimes that they didn’t even dream as probabilities. Scary thought, isn’t it?