Google Disables RCS Ads in India Following Rampant Spam by Businesses

Google has halted businesses from using RCS for promotion in India, the company's biggest market by users, following reports of rampant spam by some firms in a setback for the standard that the company is hoping to help become the future of SMS messaging. From a report: Rich Communication Services, or RCS, is the collective effort of a number of industry players to supercharge the traditional SMS with modern features such as richer texts and end-to-end encryption. Google, Samsung and a number of other firms including telecom operators have rolled out support for RCS to hundreds of millions of users worldwide in recent years. Google said last month that RCS messaging in the Messages app for Android had amassed over 500 million monthly active users. The problem, however, is that scores of businesses in India including top banks and other lending firms have been abusing the feature to send unsolicited promotional materials to any individual's phone number they can find in the country.

Re: Imagine that

[Malays2 bowman]

"Their skin is darker than mine so I don't like them and therefore I get to treat them worse than animals."

Whatever you say Christopher Columbus!

What a surprise

[devslash0]

A standard which was clearly designed to boost advertising is being abused in advertising. What a shocker, eh?

Re:

[GoTeam]

And we need "richer texts" because ... because fuck you, that's why.

By "richer texts", they mean the data gathered from each text will make their database richer.

If you leave the door open at all...

[Petersko]

... people will rush through it. There will always be actors absolutely willing to drive any channel into dust and out of business by saturating it to their ends. Abuse is until it's discarded, then move on to the next one. People mostly suck, individually and in groups.

Re:

[NateFromMich]

In this case, there is a guy showing how it sent him spam in Messages without even having a SIM card in the phone. It looks like it just went straight to his google account?

surprised?

[rkhalloran]

The nation most associated with spam call centers finds itself the victim of spam texts to its own people. Shocked, shocked I say... [/s]

IS IT JUST YOU OR IS TEH G -- THE ASS WIPE --

[koko]

of. the. world!

Its a bazaar!

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

They saying in India is: if you are not uzaar (alert) in the bazaar you lose your nizaar (trousers).

Anyone who has seen the street markets of South Asia and Middle East know how pushy the merchants are. Absolutely no surprise the vendors don't mind being really irritating.

Rich Communication Services?

[gtall]

If you have to name your whizzy "Rich Communication Services", then you already have a problem. The name more or less says this isn't for you, the Little Guy. It is to enable all sorts of "Rich" crap you never wanted so that others can profit off of you.

RCS

[TuballoyThunder]

Designed by an advertiser for advertisers. Why I am not shocked. The thing I find shocking are the number of tech-savvy users and businesses who trust Google with their data. Their corporate culture is built on harvesting data to sell ads--it is a difficult bias to overcome.

Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem, however, is that scores of businesses in India including top banks and other lending firms have been abusing the feature to send unsolicited promotional materials to any individual's phone number they can find in the country.

That's not the problem. The problem is that Google isn't profitting from such behavior otherwise it would allow it to continue.

RCS is what CVS uses

[Antique Geekmeister]

A few of us older developers will understand that joke.

re::

[MarkKennedy]

In fact, there are many different software that can improve your business and Google is no exception. I recommend you to try https://www.pandadoc.com/quoti... [pandadoc.com] because it also works great. The software creates an interactive table that allows them to choose from several options, change the number or communicate with you directly.