Vietnam introduces anti-spam SMS regulations

The extremely dramatically named Vietnam Computer Emergency Response Team has issued a solution for reducing the number of spam SMS sent in the country. The document suggests that all networks have to label outgoing bulk advertising texts as such, and customers will be given the chance to refuse the text before it is received.

Anyone sending advertising texts also have some duties to fulfill. They will have to register their content before May, as well as educating subscribers about the costs of sending SMS to their shortcodes.

The VNCERT has also said that all providers must inform their customers about this new service… by sending them a bulk text.

What we think?

This exact problem was tackled in India recently, and this is an interestingly different solution. The Vietnamese solution calls for the mobile device owners to be educated, and empowered to refuse spam texts if they don’t want them. The Indian system calls for all bulk advertising SMS to be tagged - so that if an advertiser or business DOES send spam texts, they can be traced and punished.

I think I prefer the Indian system. It creates an atmosphere where spammers won’t want to abuse the SMS channel for fear of retribution. Under the Vietnamese system, nothing really changes. It’s just that now instead of being annoyed by spam SMS, you’ll be annoyed by notifications for spam SMS.

I guess you could call it… Vietspam! Oh, that was terrible. My apologies.