Opinion: Controlling spams and scams By Ike Señeres (Manila)

There is a big difference between spams and scams. There is really no hard and fast definition, but I would liken spams to a wrongdoing, and scams to a sin. Another way to define it is to say that a spam is a misdemeanor, while on the other hand, a scam is a crime.

Right now, there are no clear rules that could be used in controlling spams, except of course that the “victims” could report the “perpetuators” to the service providers, and the later could either suspend or cancel their accounts. Right now, there is also no real clear distinction between what is a spam and what is not, because some legitimate messages could also be mistaken as spam. 

What is clear however is a scam is identifiable, and there are enough government agencies that are tasked to enforce the laws that are regulating them. There are enough yes, but some scammers might still be able to get away if there are cracks or gray areas between the functions of two or more government agencies.

 Generally speaking, most of the scams would fall under the jurisdiction of the DTI, because the victims of the scammers are almost always the consumers of goods and services. There could however be some gray areas or overlaps in the case of some technical services such as mobile and internet services, wherein the jurisdiction could be under the NTC or the DICT. As far as I know however, they are coordinating with each other. (IS)