Advertisers are looking for ways to make themselves legitimate and squash illegitimate advertising (spam). They're betting on voluntary compliance.
The Mobile Marketing Association has announced the formation of an anti-spam committee, designed to help keep mobile communication free of spam.
The US-based Mobile Marketing Association is trying to differentiate legitimate mobile advertising from spam, and to reduce unwanted commercial emails and text messages to mobile devices. The first step along that path was the creation of an industry-wide Code of Conduct that is now part of many legal contracts used by carriers and aggregators in the mobile marketing space.
The Anti-Spam Committee will research the merits of a national preference and privacy database designed to prevent spam. That would include opt-in and opt-out mechanisms for users, compliance with which would be part of the Code of Conduct. It would, however, be optional.
The effectiveness of such a plan is questionable, as similar opt-in and opt-out mechanisms for landline advertisement calls and e-mail messages have not been as successful as hoped. Also of question is what sorts of messages would constitute "spam", since the Mobile Marketing Association's own members are, naturally, in the business of sending advertisements to mobile users. How they intend to differentiate such advertisements from unsolicited bulk messages (the typical definition of spam for e-mail), legally or practically, remains unclear.
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