There was once a time, when SMS used to be relevant and widely used, when it used to be second form of contact after calls. Now, it isn’t!
As I scroll through my SMS list, I barely see handful of messages sent by my contacts, among hundreds of offers, OTPs and of course, Spam.
Maybe that is what we need to start calling it now, OTPs and Spam.
Sure enough it is a life saver at times, when you or the person you’re trying to reach does not have any data connectivity.
However, apart from that, when do we really use SMS these days?
I get 600 free SMSs each month, last month I used it to send just 4 messages!
Yet, each day I receive at least a dozen SMSs. Most from stores and websites I bought from once and would likely never go back to again, couple from services I use regularly, occasional OTPs and rest from companies that I have never heard about, let along interacted with!
Then there are politicians who send messages, because, well they are politicians and due to that, they have a right to send messages to me, even though I never opted to receive messages from them.
Occasionally, there are these brazen chaps, who advertise their spam services, laughing in the face of TRAI and DoT regulations.
And rightly so. After all, regulation enacted by TRAI to protect mobile phone customers who have opted for DND service is laughable at best. Reporting leads nowhere, as I found out after reporting a few messages to Vodafone couple of years back.
SMS blocking software, now built into most phones are useless in front of messages like these, because they cannot be blocked!
And sadly enough, mobile phone manufacturers don’t yet give us an option to mute notifications from SMS.
Maybe I should just root my phone and uninstall the messaging app altogether. However, I need it for the all the OTPs I get from banks and other services. I guess best solution is what my sister follows, ignore all notifications generated by SMS and only open the SMS app, when you need an OTP.
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