Beware of Texts from 2346! – Ralph Guzman // Foodie

2346. I am not talking about lucky numbers for tonight’s 100+ million peso lotto draw, but I am talking about four numbers to be very cautious about.

I could not recall when or where exactly it happened. But just recently, I may have had made the mistake of replying to one of those unsolicited text messages that are randomly sent through my current provider, Globe Telecom. I started receiving these daily (spam) updates on ringtones and ringback tunes, which, admittedly, I am sometimes curious about.

What I did not know the whole time was, I was being charged for it. And it came as a somewhat big surprise when my phone bill came in early this month. I was being billed an extra 300 pesos for all these updates — plus MMS messages I did not even get to receive, open, or read. I say this because I use an

iPhone, and this phone does not support mms messaging. There was no clear indication from the beginning or from every message I received that I would be billed for each message.

Of course, I called Globe’s Customer Service to get an explanation, and was told that the service was not theirs, but was being sent by a third party provider. Globe offered to perform the unsubscription for me, and had promised to give me feedback about it.

Well, I did not receive any feedback. But today, two days after I made my call to Globe, I still received a message from 2346.

What I find very infuriating about this third party provider is that when they send you all these updates, there is NO mention at all as to how to unsubscribe. Nada. Nil. This is unlike Globe’s own updates (e.g. 2977), which tells you how to unsubscribe if you don’t wish to receive certain updates from them. We get to see this with e-mails too. A person should be easily able to unsubscribe with a click.

Since I did not have the luxury of time to make another call to Globe, I guessed the code to unsubscribe. All it took was to key in STOP as a reply.

For now, I don’t blame Globe for this, although I do wish that they would set stricter standards to providers who wish to use their network to send messages. After all, I will need to pay for the spam through globe. Goodness, I can’t believe that I am being billed for spam. So of course, I do feel cheated by the third party provider. A look at archived messages from 2346 refers mobile phone users to sites such as dloadstation.com and mp3tone.ph. The strange thing about these two websites is that they are currently not accessible via pc or laptop. I smell something fishy.

A random search on google just now has also shown that many other subscribers are complaining about 2346.

I now understand all the more where Speaker Prospero Nograles is coming from. As a Congress Correspondent, Nograles filed a resolution calling for the investigation of these unsolicited text and mms messages. This kind of messaging by third party providers and the way consumers are being deceived by it is not fair.

You all may want to double check your phones and see if you are subscribed to other providers.

22 Replies to “Beware of Texts from 2346!”

It is time to lobby congress or at the very least let telecom regulator (NTC) be aware that service providers can and should provide safeguards againts these SMS/MMS spam. This technology is called Anti-SMS Spamming/Anti-Message Flooding and Screening.

Currently, I believe most telecom operators have the whitelist/blacklist features in their systems but encouraging subscribers to susbcribe to these features will decrease their revenues
(siempre umwanted or welcome calls or SMS are still generating income for them)

In countries like Singapore (the fine country – kasi people are heavily fined for rule violations), it is mandated that telecom companies implement this safeguard for their subscribers.

22 Replies to “Beware of Texts from 2346!”

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