At least 76% of citizens get three or more promotional or spam SMS on their phone every day, a LocalCircles survey has found.
As TRAI gets ready to introduce new norms to address the menace of pesky SMS and more, LocalCircles has conducted a baseline survey to find out the magnitude of the spam messaging problem and the kind of unwanted messages they receive.
The survey received over 41,000 responses from citizens located in 357 districts of India. While 67% respondents were men, 33% respondents were women. A total of 41% respondents were from tier 1, 35% from tier 2 and 24% respondents were from tier 3, 4 and rural districts.
33% get 3-5 unwanted text messages every day
The survey asked, “On average, how many unwanted, pesky, sales/promotional SMS/text messages do you receive on your mobile number every day?”
This query received 10,834 responses with 15% of those surveyed indicating they receive at least 1-2 unwanted SMS every day; 33% of respondents indicated 3-5 unwanted SMS; 18% of respondents indicated 6-10 SMS; and 25% indicated over 10 SMS every day. In addition, 7% of respondents did not give a clear response opting for “can’t say” and just 2% of respondents stated they “don’t get any such text messages/ SMS”. The data thus shows that 76% of citizens surveyed claim that they get 3 or more promotional or spam SMS on their phone every day.
8 in 10 of citizens surveyed who are registered on DND list say they still get unwanted messages (SMS)
The survey next asked citizens “Do you get unwanted, pesky, sales/promotional SMS/ text messages on your mobile despite registering on the Do Not Disturb (DND) list?” Out of 10,640 who responded to this query, 83% stated “yes, still get them”; only 10% stated “no, don’t get them” and 7% of respondents gave no clear response indicating “can’t say”. Clearly, over 8 in 10 of citizens surveyed who are registered on DND list say they still get unwanted SMS.
Financial services and real estate services are top senders of unwanted or promotional messages
The survey next asked respondents, “Under what category do you get the most number of unwanted, pesky, sales/promotional SMS/ text messages on your mobile number?” Out of 10,654 responses received for this query, 50% indicated “selling financial services”; 32% “selling real estate”; 6% indicated “offering a job/ earnings opportunity”; 2% indicated “providing healthcare/ pathology services”; 2% indicated “providing mobile number, better mobile talk/ data plans, etc.”; 2% indicated “other categories” not listed above and 6% of respondents stated, “can’t say”. The data shows that financial services and real estate services are top senders of unwanted or promotional SMS.
87% of citizens surveyed say they are receiving unwanted text messages (SMS) from mobile numbers and from coded senders that are hard to associate with a company/ brand
The survey next asked “How do you receive the majority of these unwanted, pesky, sales/ promotional SMS/ text messages on your mobile?” This query received 9,888 responses with 56% indicating “from different mobile phone numbers”; 31% of respondents indicated “from different coded senders which are hard to associate with a company/brand”; and 13% indicated “from different company/brand coded sender”. The data shows 87% of citizens surveyed say that they are receiving unwanted SMS from mobile numbers and from coded senders that are hard to associate with a company/ brand.
LocalCircles, a community social media platform, enables citizens and small businesses to escalate issues for policy and enforcement interventions and enables the Government to make policies that are citizen and small business centric.
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