Thai Premier Spams Nation, Prompts Consumer Outcry

patiwat writes "Newly installed Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva's first act was to send a spam SMS to tens of millions of Thai cell phone subscribers. The message, signed 'Your PM,' urged people to help him solve the Thai political crisis and respond with their postal code at a charge of 3 baht (10 US cents). The new premier was criticized for violating privacy regulations."

Comments

The actually SMS message translation

[societyofrobots]

If every politician and businessmen here sent a message to rally people for their cause, we'd end up with dozens of spam messages per day. Actually, I get ~2 spam messages/day from businesses in Thailand already (I live here).

This is abuse of communication, not privacy.

Oh and it was from 'yourPM', no spaces. I got it on my cell, here is the translation:

"I am your new prime minister. I ask that everyone join hands for Thailand / if you are interested in talking with me please send me a postcard to your main postoffice at #9191 (3 baht)"

My thai friends thought the SMS was a prank . . . The majority population feels he became PM through very immoral means, so I can see this SMS message making a lot of people not happy over here . . .

Re:It depends on how much is in it.

[Daengbo]

I can't get every word, but here's a rough translation:

I, the new Prime Minister, invite you to help Thailand come out of its current {illegible, probably crisis). If you're interested in receiving (illegible, probably information) from me,please send your 5-digit postal code to this number .... (the rest is cut off)

It doesn't seem very spammy. The tone was appropriate, neither common nor overly polite. The Thai language paper I looked through didn't even mention the message. I look at it as just a better version of the required political speech on your first day.

p.s. I know that you were joking about reading (it does have "Thai," though), but I though you might be interested in the content.