'Text Brigade'

It may have come after a long delay but it was a good thing that the National Telecommunications Commission has finally come out with a public information campaign it dubbed “Dealing with ‘vanishing load,’ text spam, and text scams.” The NTC came out with warning in a full-page advertisement yesterday at The STAR, in collaboration with the two giant telecommunications companies, Smart and Globe as well as Sun Cellular.

The paid ad came out several months after Senate president Juan Ponce-Enrile denounced in a privilege speech the case of “vanishing load” that he personally experienced. For security-conscious people like Enrile, I was not surprised to learn from him that he uses a pre-paid simcard for his mobile cellular phone. The case of “vanishing load” is the bane among pre-paid simcard users whose loads are eaten up by unwanted or unsolicited promotions of certain unscrupulous service providers of telcos if you respond to them. 

One particular information that came out from that Senate hearing I remembered so well, is the fact that only three percent of over 70 million Filipino subscribers are post-paid and the rest are pre-paid. The NTC admitted that they could only monitor the post-paid subscribers but not the pre-paid simcards because these are freely retailed at every mom-and-pop stores. 

Right now, there is no way to track down pre-paid simcard holders whether these are legitimately used or utilized for criminal activities. Other than outright criminal schemes like kidnapping or terrorist-bombing, what adds to the long list of nefarious use of pre-paid simcards are these spam text and text scams.

With the advent of the political season related to the May 2010 elections, these pre-paid simcards are lately enjoying brisk sales. Thanks, to the resurgence of the so-called “text brigade” which is nothing but a black propaganda machinery — apparently employed by certain presidential bets.

This is very discernible at the rate I have been getting text messages against certain non-administration candidates in next year’s presidential race. The subject of most of the text attacks that I’ve been receiving are Senators Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III and Mar Roxas II, who are the presidential and vice presidential bet, respectively, of the Liberal Party. The second most maligned presidential candidate in these text messages is Sen. Manny Villar who is the presidential standard-bearer of his own Nacionalista Party.

What irks me with this “text brigade” is their lack of common sense to keep sending me these unwanted text messages even while I was abroad. For about a week while I was in Italy — as can be gleaned from the datelines of my previous columns last week — I got at least 21 text messages from the Philippines that came from different numbers but obviously from pre-paid simcards.

When you have an international roaming cell phone, whether you like it or not, you receive these text messages. What riles me is the fact that all of these were being charged to my account at a much higher rate because it includes toll fees. These were all billed to me in my post-paid account. Unless of course, I do not use my cell phone or block all incoming text messages, but that defeats the purpose of bringing the cell phone with you.

In the case of Italy, text messages received and sent out will cost you P35 each. I was told by an overseas Filipino worker in Rome that incoming text messages are free of charge but the outgoing text messages are charged. So I was relieved to hear about it.

It turned out, however, my relief was short lived. When I got back here, I checked with my friend at Globe Telecom who told me that the toll-free text applies only to those who buy Kabayan pre-paid card promo that Globe offers to OFWs. They came up with this promo as their way of helping OFWs spend less for their communicating back home with their respective families in the Philippines.

This really enraged me. Come to think of it — I’m going to pay as much as P735 for these 21 unwanted text messages that will be charged in my Smart billing next month. If it is any source of consolation, these nincompoops who sent me these text messages paid also at a much higher rate and not just P1.

However, it still boils me to think that these “text brigades” are used in spending taxpayers’ money to spread their attacks against these non-administration presidential candidates. I would like to believe, though, that Defense Secretary Gilberto “Gibo” Teodoro, who is the Lakas-CMD-Kampi presidential standard-bearer, has nothing to do with these “text brigades” just because most of these text attacks all zeroed in against non-administration bets. 

More than the paid ad campaign, I think the NTC should find a way to protect the millions of post-paid subscribers from being at the mercy of political spam “text brigades.” I intentionally did not erase these text messages so I can expose these cellphone numbers as listed down below.

09392165404     09396213284     09395497128         09186323724    09396513193     09086514625      09086514628      09286643576    09291959395       09394680841    09394579915    09396513448      09396513224         09394578902    09394640876     09394558742      09394519407      09396315312    09396315311   09394678840     09199813818

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Congratulations to my good friend, Stella Banzon dela Paz, who writes for the STAR’s Business As Usual Section. She won the Quill Awards for Communication Skills in Publications for First Gen 2008 Annual Report titled Responsible Generation. The other one is for the Creative Publications Design for First Gen 2008 Annual Report Responsible Generation. She wrote about First Gen as the country’s leading clean and renewable energy company and also the country’s biggest independent power producer.