The best way to know the self is feeling oneself at the moments of reckoning. The feeling of being alone, just with your senses, may lead you to think more consciously. More and more of such moments may sensitize ‘you towards you’, towards others. We become regular with introspection and retrospection. We get ‘the’ gradual connect to the higher self we may name Spirituality or God or just a Humane Conscious. We tend to get a rhythm again in life. We need to learn the art of being lonely in crowd while being part of the crowd. A multitude of loneliness in mosaic of relations! One needs to feel it severally, with conscience, before making it a way of life. One needs to live several such lonely moments. One needs to live severallyalone.

Tuesday 22 January 2013

ALTRUIST AND THE PHONE-SEX SERVICE: MANIPULATION OF MOBILE VAS – A CRIMINAL ACT OF NEGLIGENCE

For some days, I have been receiving text messages from my mobile service operator about some chat service. Like any other ‘value added service’ text message, I would delete them without reading. During the course of a normal conversation, a senior informed me how such ‘friend chat’ services are being used as front for ‘phone sex rackets’.

Last November, the Noida Cyber Crime Cell had arrested four for an alleged phone-sex service. According to a report from the ‘Indian Express’, the police named Airtel along with the ‘value added services’ (VAS) company Altruist in the case. Airtel had outsourced its ‘Airtel Friendz Chat’ service to Altruist and Altruist had outsourced it to some other call-centre. The chat service was used to run a phone-sex racket. Airtel was named in the FIR for allegedly failing to monitor the service.

Among the four arrested were the General Manager of Altruist, two call-centre executives and one woman who used to speak to the people connected through the service.


I cannot say anything about the text messages that I am receiving from my service operator Vodafone these days as I haven’t responded to them and I haven’t come across any media report about complaints of the similar nature that was the case with Airtel’s service.

But what is surprising is the service is still continued. The senior told me that calling on 543216 from any Airtel number routes to the same service. He told me of many cases and complaints where the service was activated without consent of the users. Activating VAS services without taking consumer’s consent is a common con by the mobile service operators but when it connect to some criminal activity then such negligence become criminal in nature.

What is unbelievable is that an operator like Airtel, largest in India and among the largest in the world can be so lackadaisical. First it failed to monitor manipulation of one of its ‘value added services’ for a criminal act. And then hearing a complaint of the similar nature about the same service just after two months only adds to the mounting trust gap.

Where is the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), the apex telecom regulatory body in the country? Apart from the Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections and Information Technology (IT) Act, the arrested were also charged for violating the TRAI guidelines.

If it is true, it needs to be investigated. Airtel must take responsibility and act. TRAI must probe the negligence on part of Airtel as well as by its own people. Because the follow-up reports say the problem could be much bigger in scale.

Some follow-up reports after the November 5 arrests said there were many call-centres in Noida running phone-sex services under the garb of VAS and also that the women working in these call-centres were sourced from the local prostitution rackets.

They focused on how it would hurt the ‘VAS’ industry as Altruist, an established VAS player, was involved in cheap and dirty business practices. The return is handsome as in this case. Reportedly, the Altruist phone-sex service generated several crores in revenue.

When the lure of easy bucks is so high and when there is such negligence on part of the monitoring agencies, the Altruist case could not be a standalone case.

But the follow-up action in this case has been pathetic. When this properly reported case had the nemesis of being neglected so soon (if a 543216 call by an Airtel number still redirects to a manipulated VAS outlet), what can we say about misuse of many other VAS elements as most of the ‘value added services’ are outsourced by the big service operators.

©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/ 

Weblinks to some of the reports: