A mockery of ‘do not call’ registry

When Pranab Mukherjee was the finance minister four years ago, his speech in Parliament was interrupted by a call on his mobile phone with an offer of a loan. This was five years after the Supreme Court banned unsolicited tele-marketing calls and messages in a landmark judgment in Harsh Pathak Vs Union of India. Although the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) had put in place the National Do Not Call Registry, the menace of unregistered tele- marketing has not abated. Just how sincere are telecom operators in curbing this nuisance when it means loss of revenue from marketing companies? And are they the only villains of the piece? Of course, there is little leeway for them to extricate themselves from blame when they have automated promotional calls for their own products like hello tunes.

 

I’ve been getting a spate of calls from automobile insurance companies. The callers know the make of my car, the policy renewal date and God knows what else. They claim to have got this information from my car dealer. It’s not merely personal financial details that are being unauthorisedly shared. A friend once received a call from a marketer who addressed him with his expanded initials that is only mentioned in his passport. The leaks of sensitive information to strangers are apparently happening from almost every database. Another friend who shuttles between the US and India has activated her 

global roaming service for her elderly parents to reach her in an emergency. As the Caller Identification facility is not always available for international calls, she often wakes up with a cold sweat when her India number rings in the middle of the night thinking that it’s an SOS from her folks only to be badgered by an uncouth marketer. It’s not just a waste of money on nuisance incoming global roaming calls. The callers are also often rude when they realise that you are not interested in their offering. 

 

The right to privacy includes the right not to be disturbed. Although its decision was partially overturned by the National Commission, the Delhi State Commission in Nivedita Sharma Vs Bharti Tele Ventures & Others had observed that “consumers are either ignorant or indifferent or insensitive to their rights or are nonchalant, as they prefer to suffer in silence, fume and fret and curse the service providers or the persons who indulge in such activities and send tremors of tension and bouts of blood pressure.” It’s not just the Consumer Protection Act that covers this menace. Sec. 11 of the Telephone Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) Act as well as Sections 427 and 513 of The Indian Telegraph 

Rules, 1951 make unsolicited commercial communication illegal. In fact, in their subscriber agreements, most mobile operators usually “undertake not to disclose your personal information to any other cellular service providers, banks, credit card companies etc. or their agents, affiliates which could lead to invasion of your privacy”. 

 

There are many other cogs in the tele-marketing nuisance wheel. When you drop your visiting card at a store for a lucky dip prize or fill out a feedback form at a restaurant or sign up for a discount related membership at a mall or pharmacy or bookstore, you part with your personal details. Entering your spouse’s name or wedding anniversary may seem innocuous but often it could even be a clue to a password or worse, have a direct ‘open sesame’ effect. There is an industry out there preying on your data, which is why you can buy even one lakh numbers for as little as three thousand rupees. 

 

Fines are imposed by TRAI on those who make unsolicited calls and their numbers are even cancelled. But what is the mechanism to prevent the same agency from popping up in the system with another name? Can whatsapp be used to send bulk messages and circumvent the TRAI prohibition? What about ‘modem farming’ by which multiple SIM cards are used to send messages through a modem to get over TRAI’s limit of 100 SMS per day per SIM? What about call centres of banks that end every call with a template offer of a loan or credit card? Even the term ‘unsolicited’ can be twisted to exclude those whose business establishments you visited or those whose services you availed of in the recent past. If we have the resources to tap phones, don’t tell me that unsolicited calls cannot be dealt with. The United States has the Telephone Consumer Protection Act under which fines of upto $11,000 are levied per unsolicited call. 

 

Postscript: While writing this column, I received five unsolicited tele-marketing calls and three text messages in the space of two hours. That includes priceless information on the menu for upcoming dinners in a club despite having terminated my membership a few years ago.