Thursday, November 29, 2018

Are There Backdoors to the New Do Not Call Regulations?

TRAI, post deliberations, had earlier this year released a new Do-Not-Call / NDNC or Unsolicited Commercial Communication regulation. This was well in the right direction, but it seems that companies are already finding backdoors to the regulation.

For example, I have lately been finding SMS' from Amazon seeming to be non-compliant to the present regulations. Present regulations require a set naming protocol in setting the sender ID.  But the SMS' from Amazon being sent to me seem to be from a generic prefix - 51466.  (Till recently they used to come from Sender ID XX-Amazon).

Sender ID Seems Compliant with #NDNC Regulations


Is this SenderID Compliant with #NDNC Regulations?

One of the largest Internet Companies in the world bringing this change, is something that made me notice this. Could these be SMS' sent from some international gateway and be a back-door the regulations? If so, this may warrant some introspection.  How will the new Do-Not-Call regulations handle such scenarios? Would it lead to a scenario, that the regulation can be by-passed using global networks and cheap inter-connectivity to India? If that happens, it's just going to economically impact Indian enterprises with companies overseas getting windfall benefits (and a drain of foreign exchange). This aspect of the new regulations may merit a deeper analysis.

Notes:
  1. My tweet to @amazonIN asking for details on this and their reply is here
  2. I have contributed to comments on the policy prior to it's being published.