…that we don’t understand, much less appreciate, Welcome to the last day of the week and the final working day of the month. And yes, the root of almost all bad solutions is that solution designers don’t understand the incentives of stakeholders. Instead, they impose more control, more checks, more balances. After a while, those give rise to their own problems. Which forces a new set of solutions. And so on. A great example of this is India’s ambitious Do Not Disturb policy which first rolled out over 15 years ago, backed by a National Do Not Call Registry (NDNC). I’m pretty sure I signed up on the very first day. Of course, I still get spam calls and messages. Every day more than 1 billion messages are sent. Of this, 20-25% are promotional/unsolicited and commercial. A survey estimated that 74% of those on the NDNC continue to get spammed like me as well. Think about it. 74%. India’s telcos are estimated to earn hundreds of millions of dollars from leasing out their SMS pipes to spammers. The government’s and regulator’s solutions have focused largely on mandating more technology, more gatekeeping, more permissions. But spammers continue to find ways around it. By the way, your neighbourhood bank staff could be one of most egregious violators, as they think nothing of acquiring customer data from all manners of sources in order to sell the next loan, savings account or insurance investment. Data brokers sell lists with anywhere from tens of thousands to millions of names, addresses, and demographics for as little as a tenth of a Rupee per contact. Why is it that DND and NDNC still don’t work? “The incentives are far bigger than the fear of a fine,” a credit card telemarketing business owner say that. we try explains the twists and turns in India’s war against spam. A war which doesn’t seem to have any end in sight.
