Imagine a world without offline access to your bank transactions, password resets or delicious weekend discounts. A world where product news, event notifications and feedback requests are no longer at your fingertips.

On December 3rd, 1992, wireless communication was revolutionized by the first short text message (SMS). A 22-year-old software programmer from the UK sent the words ‘Merry Christmas’ and opened a gateway into a new reality.

A reality where SMS not only connects people to people but also to global markets. In 2000, a Finnish news service circulated the first SMS advertisement and advanced bulk SMS into an innovative media channel.

Social Media was predicted to end the relevance of SMS but the founder and CEO of Afrinet Telecom, Gabriel Ng’anga, provides a different perspective:

“.. people said that SMS is dying especially with the entry of social media and other trending ways of communication. The market is still very receptive. We have seen a lot of interest and uptake regarding Bulk SMS especially from financial institutions that want to automate their processes.”

Safaricom monopolizes telecommunications and mobile banking in Kenya. Mpesa has 42 million active customers and transformed financial transactions using bulk SMS. Once upon a time, tellers and scratch cards were physical but now exist as automated texts. Bulk SMS did away with the time-consuming, paper-wasting lifestyle of the past.

Currently mobile penetration in Kenya is the highest in Sub-Saharan Africa. Legitimate SMS providers work tirelessly with sophisticated API’s to connect market players like Safaricom to their customers. However, the unprecedented reach of bulk SMS is fraught with risk.

In 2019, Truecaller revealed that Kenyans are the third most spammed mobile users in the world. Malware infection, damaged systems, data theft and mental disturbance occurs rampantly.

How many times have you checked your phone to find messages from companies you don’t recall giving your number? By definition: that and any unwanted or unsolicited text is spam.

Receiving those pesky promos might have something to do with those lengthy terms & conditions you didn’t read that one time. Unknowingly giving away consent is a very common misstep that leads to spam.

The darker side of spam lies in smoky apartments with greedy hackers drinking red bull. SMS phishing or “smishing” exploits human trust and lures victims into revealing personal information such as ID numbers, passwords, PINS and credit card details. Hundreds of thousands of Kenyans have experienced financial loss from such attacks.

Unhappy customers turn to communications service providers (CSP’s) to log a litany of complaints. Due to a lack of accurate data on spammers, CSP’s turn to mobile network operators (MNO’s) responsible for circulating bulk SMS.

MNO’s are being sanctioned with crippling fines but they do not store, manage, or acquire their client data bases. This absolves them of any fault when customers log complaints concerning spam SMS.

To curb the growth of spam SMS, MNO’s have placed the following strategies in place:

• Time restrictions to circulate legitimate texts between 8am and 6pm only.
• Clear distinctions between transactional and promotional SMS to enable selective blocking for recipients.
• Stop codes i.e STOP 4569*5# to provide recipients the option of withdrawing consent.

CSP’s are also working towards regaining customer loyalty and trust with anti-spam campaigns. Safaricom and Airtel have published educational articles on their websites discussing how to spot and report scammers, spammers and fraudsters.

CSP’s and MNO’s should work hand-in-hand and continue to employ proactive strategy’s to control spam SMS. Let tomorrow be the day revolution wins over destitution and the story of SMS is told with pride.