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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."
I wonder what this plan to solve the crisis involves. Figuring out who is more likely to respond to unsolicited mail/email/etc...?
I think the charge of 3 baht per message says it all.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
People over use the word spam these days. All the new PM did was try to rally his people to a cause. It was in bad taste perhaps but seeing as how Thailand doesn't have the type of emergency broadcast system we have here in the USA I'd think this isn't totally uncalled for.
If he had made this a habit and over used it then I would call it spam, but this looks like a one time deal during a genuine state of emergency. I wouldn't call that spam personally.
...get the phone company to provide the cell tower location they are connected to....
I'm not sure you comprehend the logistics involved in doing this for tens of millions of users. And besides supposedly, according to the article, people spending the effort to send back the text message will give him an indication of "those who wants to 'help' solve the crisis", not "those who received this message". Otherwise, just pulling the address database from the telecoms would be a helluva lot easier then your method.
This whole attempt, of course, speaks volumes, mostly to the apparent idiocy of a PM who believes that either:
1) The people who respond really want to help (instead of just responding to the novelty of it)
2) People that don't respond want the crisis to continue
3) The people that are intelligent/capable enough to actually provide major support for his efforts would be attracted to his cause by this text message.
I'm betting more that he's actually not an idiot, but has some shady deal/debt with the telecoms.
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
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... 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)
Step one: don't make it so easy for a politician to send a text message to everyone in the country that has a cell phone. If they can do that, they can abuse it.
Pop quiz: what business is Thaksin (oddly enough the loser in the current round of turmoil) in?
I read the article, but couldn't decipher the picture with the Thai text.
But I think I recognized "Pad Thai" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pad_thai) in there somewhere.
So this message could be just "spam, Pad Thai and spam." There is not much spam in that. Of course, you could ask the waiter to replace the Pad Thai with spam, and the you would have "spam, spam and spam."
Hmmm . . . Pad Thai . . . is it ok to eat that for breakfast?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Anything starting with C and ending with n.
I am okay if Carl Levin sends a spam SMS to each of our personal cell phones every day. All I ask in return is that we be allowed to each send an SMS to his personal cell phone every day.
"You're never ready, just less unprepared."