Sachin Taparia, founder of LocalCircles stated, “The survey finds that not only the menace of spam SMS is continuing unabated with 68% mobile subscribers surveyed reporting receiving 4 or more spam or promotional messages each day. Now, mobile phone users, most of whom also use Whatsapp, have another menace to deal with spam or promotional Whatsapp messages.”
According to a survey that was based on 57,000 users from 373 districts across the country, spam messages are making their way into WhatsApp apps and 95% of people getting messages despite being on the DND list.
The survey shows that 32% of the participants received one to three messages, 36% four to seven messages, and 32% eight or more messages. The survey states, “95% of Whatsapp users surveyed confirmed getting them while every mobile subscriber surveyed got spam SMS regardless of their DND list registration.”
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5% out of 11,326 users stated they were not troubled, 44% received one to three Whatsapp messages, 29% four to seven messages, and 22% eight or more messages. 51% of citizens receive promotionally or spam messages even after blocking or reporting the sender’s number. WA Spam messages are catching up with SMS according to the survey.
In 2021, LocalCircles did a survey in which 95% of mobile users that were surveyed received spam and promotional ads and 73% got four or more unwanted messages daily. There were complaints from mobile users about WA spam and the firm decided to do another survey.
In the survey, the senders were pathologists, real estate agents, banks, etc on SMS as well as WA. Users are receiving spam messages from insurance agents, telemarketers, etc even with the rules in place by TRAI.
The survey states, “While TRAI can’t do much to address Whatsapp spam, 77% of mobile subscribers want it to work with telcos and enable a Report Spam feature within the SMS as the current reporting mechanisms aren’t found to be user friendly.”
The survey states that stringent action needs to be taken on the reported numbers and the telcos, government, and apps like WA should come together and work on this hazard.
