NZ holding back the text spam nightmare

The telecommunication industry has made a pre-emptive strike to prevent New Zealand joining a growing international text message spam nightmare.

Legislation on text message spam will be part of an anti-spam bill this year. But the Telecommunication Carriers' Forum got on the self-regulatory front-foot with an SMS anti-spam code, passed in February, setting rules for text marketing.

Vodafone policy analyst Laura Chamberlain says the code has three principles - customers must opt in to receive texts, commercial origin of texts must be clearly stated, and there must be an opt-out mechanism.

Companies breaking the rules receive warnings and risk having their service suspended.

Chamberlain said action was needed because text spam overseas had changed the way some people used their phones.

"It's a terrible customer experience to be receiving SMS text messages, spammed ones, they don't want to receive, and we don't want it to escalate to a position it has in some other jurisdictions, where customers basically leave their phones turned off unless they want to make a call."

According to US-based wireless technology company Wireless Services, 43 per cent of text messages sent in the US are now spam, compared to 18 per cent the previous year.

Wireless Services manages up to 20 per cent of US text traffic and says it blocked 1.2 billion spam texts last year.

There are no figures on text spam for New Zealand, but industry experts say it is not yet a problem.

New Zealand Marketing Association chief executive Keith Norris said self-regulation by the relatively small domestic marketing industry had prevented New Zealanders from suffering the United States' fate.

He said a marketing industry best-practice code introduced in 2000 laid the ground rules for permission-based marketing.

"The basic understanding is the same for email as for texting, and that is you should only be sending unsolicited messages to people with whom you have an existing and relevant relationship."

Norris said the commercial attitude of New Zealand's marketing industry also helped prevent spam.

"We tend to be more responsible and more caring about the way we deliver messages."

He said US telemarketing had become so invasive that 18 months ago the Federal Trade Commission began enforcing a national "do-not-call registry" of 64 million citizens.

The marketing association runs a similar service in New Zealand on a voluntary basis. Association members include large specialist marketing companies, but many smaller businesses also use texting as a mass-marketing tool.

Gaewyn Evans, manager of downtown Auckland fashion store Identity, recently sent about 100 text messages to existing customers advertising a special discount shopping day.

"We normally ring our clients, but it takes so much time so I thought I'd try text marketing, and it was so much easier and quicker and less intrusive for the clients," she said.

"If anyone says to me they don't want to be sent information, we don't send it to them."

Norris said the campaign appeared to meet good practice criteria, but greater publicity was needed to make sure all businesses were aware of the rules.

An informal poll of lunch-time shoppers in Auckland this week backed up industry claims that domestic unsolicited text spam was still rare.

However, with computer spam now tolerated as an everyday hazard, text spam would not be welcomed.

One shopper said: "Mobile phones are a bit personal for that. I wouldn't like it at all."