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Comment by _Marak_ | Hacker News Reader

Slightly related, one of the worst things about the Indian phones and telcos are the spam advertisements that have subscription opt-ins by default.

Essentially, you will get several sms messages a day which if you accidentally hit one of the keys on your phone ( which is actually very easy ), you get billed $1 every week ( think daily fortunes / love poems / etc ). It's very easy to accidentally opt-in to several of these.

To opt-out of these advertisements you need to find a hidden number on the telcos website, send an sms message, and wait 10-14 days until the advertisements stop.

I have to think that the telcos are taking in millions of dollars every month from these spam ads.

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May I know which operator was that? I've used Airtel and Vodafone in India, and I didn't had any "services" enabled by default.

By the way, there's a centralized DND registry in India called "Commercial Communications Customer Preference Portal"[0]. You just need to send an SMS to enable/disable unsolicited commercial calls/SMS. It has been very effective so far.

[0] http://www.nccptrai.gov.in/

That thing is a joke. I'm registered as 'fully blocked' and I still get spam SMS. Last few offenders were EaseMyTrip, the Ministry of Tourism and some guy called Hemant.

Start reporting on those messages. If you are on Android, use India Against Spam. If iphone, you'll have to report manually on the operator's website. for example - airtel.in/dnd

It's a pain in the ass but I kept on reporting for a month after activating DND and the calls and messages dropped. I've even received calls from people begging me to take my complaints back or otherwise they'll loose their jobs. I agreed twice but holy hell those exact same companies spammed me again. I stopped being a good samaritan and just told them to sort it out with their companies since it's the companies fault. Now spam has reduced to a message or two a month.

From what I understand there are old mobile numbers list being passed around from before DND was available and that's why you need to start reporting the spam messages. Word quickly spreads between the companies to remove your number from the lists.

I have reported them via India Against Spam but the responses from Airtel were, roughly, 'thanks but this is not spam' so I stopped reporting. Complaining on Twitter helped with some, but not all, spammers.

A couple of years back, I started getting daily SMS in my Airtel mobile about some female actor's latest movies or whatever, without any action on my side. It took a few days for me to realise that I am losing 50p/day for getting those messages. The messages stopped after a call to the service centre; but I did not get the money back.

Parent isn't saying they're enabled by default. I can confirm that Airtel engages in the above mentioned behavior. I have spoken to them multiple times about this, and at least on one occasion (after escalating to the govt. mandated "Nodal Officer") they credited some money for "goodwill".

I used one telco provider in Philippines for a while that did something like this, sending lots of SMS spam. I had to threaten cancellation to get it slowed down.

In the USA, T-Mobile spammed me like this. Again, very difficult to stop the spam.

I think eventually this will be unstoppable, at which point I guess I'll stop using SMS and/or stop using phones.

I can't wait 'til the day I'm sitting in a group, and everyone keeps pulling out their phones every 30 seconds to clear another SMS spam, and then call me a luddite when I say I don't have a phone.

That is strange regarding T-Mobile. I've yet to get any spam from them. The only thing I get is an SMS a few days before billing occurs monthly.

It is fairly easy to block a number now.

I'm on a pay as you go plan and have never seen this.

Must've been years ago on TMO. In fact I think there was some suit. Since about 2013, they've changed a LOT.

Data is much better now, coverage is very good in metros, and sucks outside, but that's fine with me. Guess if you live in certain areas (e.g. Los Gatos, CA) you might have to get VZ or something - though I hear they're doing a lot to fix that (e.g. band12 LTE using 700Mhz spectrum).

Its a sign of heavy corruption and non existent consumer protection laws.

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