If you receive unsolicited spam SMS and get billed for it, report to the Malaysian Multimedia and Communication Commission, your telephone company and the content provider.
MCMC corporate communications head Adelina Iskandar said the commission knew of cases where mobile phone users were charged for unsolicited spam SMS.
“But no one has officially submitted a complaint to the MCMC. Those who receive such SMS should report to our consumer forum via our website.
“They must also inform their telcos to terminate the SMS service or contact the content provider,” she said.
Adelina added that it was possible that the telcos were unaware of the spam.
The telcos, she added, usually provided the short code to the content providers and it was possible they were unaware that the content providers were billing people.
“The content provider in subscribing to the short code may have told the telco one thing and carried out something else,” she said.
She cited as an example the fake Akademi Fantasia contest in which the telcos had no part.
A reader, Dino Herrera, 59, had complained to The Star that he received several SMS via a short code for the past six months. He was billed 50sen for each message.
“Each message asks me whether I wanted to befriend a girl whose name and age is given with instructions for me to reply ‘Yes’ if I am interested.
“I ignored the messages each time and then I discovered that I was billed for the SMS.
“It came up to RM166 for six months,” he said.
Herrera added that he contacted his telco and was informed that the billing was done by a third party.
“Later, I received a call from someone who said he was with the company that sent the SMS and he was calling me from California.
“He said he would send an e-mail informing me that the company would reimburse me the sum I was billed. In fact, he even knew my e-mail address,” he said. -theStar
