The header allocation proposal.

A review:
The header allocation proposal proposes a way to centralise and streamline
header-allocation.
To my understanding it will allow:
• A loose control on number of headers allocated by regulating the number
of tokens
• Will allow a competitive market by allowing TSPs to offer discounts
• Will allow established brands to protect their trademarks through open
bidding
• Allow verification of headers and associated payments through the
consensus protocol used in blockchain
Some drawbacks/limitations/ deficiency I could figure out:
• There is no limit on how many headers any entity can buy. This might
make monitoring messages by that entity slightly difficult
• It might make it financially prohibitive small businesses to acquire a
header
• It might promote the existence and business of front end / message
aggregators
• It will impact business practises of TSPs as they now can not allot an
arbitrary number of headers, thus impacting their revenue
• Why is the maintenance rate weekly? Why is it not monthly? or yearly?

While the proposed allotment architecture might help curb and control SPAM to
an extent, it does not seem to me to have any major effect.

SPAM problem, what? Why? And how?

While the problem of SPAM is difficult to solve, I think the difficulty is more
due to the nature of the problems origin rather than any inefficiency or
incapability of its solution. There are three questions we need to ask before
attempting to solve this problem:
1. Why exactly do people/ entities send SPAM? What is the motivation /
driving force behind it?
2. What exactly is SPAM? The precise definition of SPAM needs to be
decided before we attempt to curb it.
3. How do we measure/ define success while tackling SPAM?
These three questions are essentially a part of correctly formulating the actual
problem. Not answering or not being able to answer these questions is what
leads to the appearance of handling SPAM being a wicked problem rather than
an intractable one.
the ‘why?’ of SPAM:
I believe that the driving force behind SPAM is human nature. Humans want to
make their lives better. In the modern setting, earning money is a big part of that
goal. Another aspect from human want is human greed. People always want
more than they have. They might not actively work for it, but nobody ever
rejects extra resources. If given a million dollars no strings attached, nobody
would say no thank you keep your money I don’t need it. SPAM may or may
not lead to direct financial gain but its power as an advertisement will in most
cases lead to some sort of gain for the originating entity. This gain means that
unless we change human nature or even the general thinking process of people,
we will always have SPAM. Since such a change is essentially impossible
without facing massive adversity as a society (something which is both
unethical and practically impossible to manufacture) SPAM will remain an ever
evolving, ever-growing, never-ending problem.
What is SAPM?
Onto the second problem. A quick search on the internet yields the definition of
SPAM as ‘any unwanted/unsolicited digital message sent in bulk’. This
definition according to me does not accurately capture the nature of SPAM.
Any broad/ general definition of SPAM might not be acceptable to every
consumer/ regulator/ TSP/ sender, etc. what irritates one person might not be so
irritating to someone else. What someone finds helpful might be useless
information to someone else. So, to find an actionable, one definition fits all of
SPAM is probably not possible.
Personally, I define SPAM as anything unwanted of irritating to the user.
This opens another problem with defining SPAM is what people feel and what
they convey is not necessarily the same. This might be due to purposeful
obfuscation/ modification of information or the inability to accurately express
one’s feelings. This means gathering accurate and trustworthy data to help
define SPAM is extremely difficult.
How do we measure success?
Now the third question. How do we measure/ define success while tackling
SPAM. Now as discussed above it is a safe working assumption that it is
impossible to completely curb/regulate SPAM. It is ever evolving, you put
obstructions to Sending SPAM and people will find alternate methods to go
around them. This means 100% success rate is impossible. So how do we define
success in this scenario? Is it curbing 90% of all SPAM? Is it 80%? Or is it
some other arbitrary measure. Is being able to if not stop then at least identify
any and all SPAM messages and then being able to track the sender success?
One of the reasons this or any other social problem is not solved is because we
rarely make a realistic measure of what success is (at least in my opinion).
Personally, I would define success as being able to monitor and track any
message being sent. If we can authenticate the contents and sender of every
message and convey this to the user, I count it as success. If we can any type of
message that a user does not want than it is success.
Problem structure and possible solution. A high-level view:
The problem of SPAM, similar to the problem of drugs or any other
distribution-based problem can be broken up into three broad parts.

Any effective solution to the problem will need to be a multi-pronged one

which tries to regulate each of the three parts. I think that from a regulator point
of view it is easiest to find a solution either by policing the distribution network
or by making its use difficult for the source of the message. from a legal POV
while making laws, it is easier to put the burden of monitoring, the burden of
proof in case of wrongdoing, and the potential blame on the source of the
messages. As far as the consumers are concerned since it is difficult to decide
what they actually want and any attempt at trying to regulate consumer
behaviour regarding SPAM is inadvisable, any effort has to be voluntary on
consumers part and our part is to urge them to be proactive and expressive and
allow better means for the consumers to convey their likes and dislikes.

Multiple possible methods for a solution

Since SPAM has both social and financial roots, we need a multi-faceted
approach to deal with it. some possible avenues are:
• The financial aspect: make SPAMs financially infeasible unless within
mandates of some strictly regulated and monitored architecture
• The procedural/bureaucratic aspect: make the solution/ architecture so
procedurally intimidating that unless determined no one wants to send
SPAM.
• The technological aspect: this is slightly broad and includes SPAM
detection and tracing tech, the technological process that underlies header
allocation/detection/verification architecture, data sharing among TSPs
etc.
• The regulatory/ legal aspect: the rules, regulations, and laws of dealing
with SPAM and various parties associated with its origination,
propagation, target identification, etc.
• The social aspect: this is another broad one and includes making sending
SPAM a social faux-pas, identifying what people actually consider
SPAM, spreading awareness among people about their options in
restricting the messages they receive, etc.

The interdisciplinary nature of solution:

SPAM while mainly a communication (text, voice, video, written, etc.) and
broadcasting problem, also touches upon issues like data collection and
protection, privacy, anticipating public acceptance and general reaction, etc.
Inspiration and solutions of how to deal with SPAM can also be taken from
various other fields like the movie industry, AI research and social psychology
to name a few.

Laws across the world:

A study of various laws across the world regarding SPAM show a general trend
of following three basic principles:
1. Consent: user consent whether explicit or implicit is required before
sending any commercial message.
2. Identification: the nature of message and the identity of sender needs to
be clearly identifiable by the user.
 3. Opt-out method: a speedy, efficient, working, and easy to follow opt-out
method is to be provided to the user
While the laws of different countries have their strengths like the fairly
extensive scope of the Australian Spam act of 2003, the strict financial
punishments and the handling of bulk messages of Singapore’s SPAM control
act of 2007, or the very detailed and exacting definitions of permissible
messages and actions regarding sending of commercial messages in the CAN-
SPAM act of USA. They all can be summarized to the above 3 principles in
their essence.
It might be due to them only addressing a part of the whole SPAM problem, or
maybe due to the fact that action is only taken when consumers file legal
complaints (something majority of the people avoid due to SPAM being a minor
irritant in most cases), these acts while theoretically sound have shown
themselves to be practically inefficient as evident by the still flourishing SPAM
business all over the world.

possible steps that can help handling SPAM:

as said above any solution towards handling SPAM needs to be multipronged
and multifaceted. These are some ideas I think can help fighting SPAM.
• Do not curb SPAM. Allow anyone to send any message freely any
number of times. Just ensure that all messages are sent through authorized
well-monitored channels.
• While a distributed ledger is more secure and trustworthy, I fear due to
the large number of users any attempt to store consent and DND
preferences on a blockchain may prove untenable due to the possibly
large and ever-increasing size of the blockchain.
• Either make a govt. organization or a TSP conference whose purpose is to
create /manage/ monitor and run queries on any SPAM related data. This
will ensure that all TSPs are on the same page and that there is no
unlawful activity/ discrepancy in operation
• The idea of open auction of headers is a good one as it both limits the
number of Spammers to known entities and ensures various entities to
protect their trademark and identity.
• In addition to the open auction there needs to be some soft cap on the
number of headers any given entity can purchase. Say some entity
purchased a total of 25 headers. Then a purchase of anymore headers
 requires an explanation of requirement and what the other headers are
being used for.
• Either the headers or the templates need to correctly identify the source of
the message. This means that all headers and associated templated will
need to be verified and not just allotted freely.
o A possible solution to this is that on template creation TSPs require
addition of identifiers like BANK, SBI, AADHAR, OTP, etc. and
disallow such terms in the beginning of template unless the
authenticity can be established.
• Is it possible that entities just send template number, variables and
destination list to TSPs who then construct the message and send it
forward
o This construction of message can be handled by the separate entity
mentioned in a previous point
o Some time-sensitive messages like OTPs and emergency broadcast
can be marked as such and sent directly to the user without any
verification. This in case that any message constructed by TSP has
a time lag extending the TTL of such message
• Putting restrictions on mining of user addresses will help in curbing
unsolicited messages to the user
o Such restrictions can be unrelated to SPAM of telecom in general
and be a part of privacy/ data protection laws instead.
• The user should be informed of the fact that they have consented to
receive messages ASAP after giving their consent.
o Any such notification needs to come before any messages from the
entity can be sent to the user
o This will allow user to identify unwilling/ fraudulent/ implied
consent
o This coupled with an easy consent revocation/ blocking method
will allow users a greater peace of mind regarding receiving SPAM
o This will also help in identifying farmed addresses and taking
actions against them.
• We can actually promote telemarketers by licensing them as long as they
adhere to some regulations
o This will allow us to limit the number of sources who send SPAM
to known entities
o Taking away of a license can affect the business of a telemarketer
and will provide a financial and social pressure for them to stick to
regulations
 o The job of authenticating smaller entities can be given to these
telemarketers instead of putting it on TSPs
o This will also help in defining the scope of what where and how
many about the messages to be sent
o This will also help from a legal standpoint as we will be better able
to determine who is responsible for sending SPAM
• It is true that we can not be sure that a customer is able to communicate
their likes and dislikes accurately. But we can gradually improve
ourselves to be able to ascertain customer preference.
o Various aspects of AI like ML and NLP will be useful in such an
endeavour
o In the beginning customers can be given some broad categories to
block and an easy suggestion/complaint mechanism. This feedback
can then be analysed to give customers a better broader choice of
what to block
• Is it possible to establish an authenticity/fact check system for SPAM?
o Users can request the check of authenticity/ source from the TSPs
for a nominal sum (say Rs.2).
o This will allow us to figure out fraudsters and other violators of
regulations
• If we can figure out the source of a fraud message / SPAM, we can add a
mandatory caller tune to those numbers saying that the owner is a
suspected/known fraudster/Spammer and to be careful while talking to
them
o This will put social pressure on the fraudsters
o It will impact their business
o It will give us a larger dataset to determine how, where, and by
who? fraud and SPAM take place.
o It will give more opportunities to identify and catch the
perpetrators
• Standardization of variables in templates is important
o Even checks like validity of phone number/ email/ name etc, like
done in online forms might help curb SPAM
o Putting rules on variables will reduce misuse of templates

Role of technology in stopping SPAM:

New applications of technologies like AI and blockchain will definitely help in
curbing SPAM. Both of these are foundational technologies and trying to find
solutions using them may lead to a completely new architecture which can have
the power to overcome most of the problems we are facing today.
AI and related fields can be used extensively. Some possible uses are:
• AI to analyse the incoming templates and check their validity
• AI to learn what the users want and improve their options
• AI to manage the message sending and construction process to ensure
user preferences are followed.
• AI to analyse log data and make our systems better

Final thoughts:
Any solution to SPAM needs to be multi-pronged and multifaceted.
Technologies like AI and blockchain will help us redefine how we deal with
messages and ultimately help stop SPAM.
The problem of SPAM is both intractable and essentially impossible. If we keep
in mind that 100% success is not realistic and make a concerted effort on parts
of both the govt. and TSPs. It is possible to make significant progress in if not
curbing. Then at least controlling SPAM.