ISLAMABAD: In order to curb the ever-increasing misleading schemes and spamming on SMS and calls, the people of the twin cities have demanded the concerned authorities to take strict action against such illegal activities.
“Authorities should adopt new mechanism besides asking the public to cooperate and report any such misleading items,” a subscriber Saleem Tahir said. He said, “It is observed that despite various measures, dissatisfaction among telecom consumers continues regarding fake, spam and unsolicited commercial calls.”
There is also a need to change social behavior in many ways as mobile has become a ubiquitous communication medium and necessity for various social and commercial purposes but there should be some laws for commercial users as well.
A student Rafia Azeem said, “In our society, negative elements have adopted new tactics to despoil people which should be controlled by the concerned authorities. She said that other than fake calls, telemarketing is also becoming a reason of disturbance for subscribers because nowadays companies have started using the telephone for marketing and advertising, commonly known as ‘telemarketing’ apart from personal voice communication. Nowadays, a wide range of products and services are offered through telemarketing, which sometimes becomes very disturbing due to odd timing of calls and texts, she added.
Unsolicited Commercial Communications (UCC) is one of the major issues of concern for telecom consumers and has resulted in a large number of complaints.
A representative of Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) told APP that it has requested subscribers to register complaints of fraudulent calls or SMS to PTA on toll-free helplines. She said that just in case if everyone fails to cater their query, one can also email their query to [email protected] besides visiting PTA’s website to lodge their complaint.
PTA has informed everyone to strictly avoid transferring mobile credit to an unknown number. Any such unsolicited call or SMS demanding money or contact details for the transfer of money must not be entertained, the authority warned.
The Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) also took notice of fake calls in which people were asked about their private information. ISPR denied that such calls were made by Pakistan Army and requested public not to respond to such calls and immediately report the same on their emergency helpline UAN 1135 and 1125.
