TRAI tests digital consent alerts with select mobile users

NEW DELHI: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has switched on a small but significant experiment that could finally tidy up the messy world of promotional consent. Under a joint pilot with the Reserve Bank of India, a handful of mobile users will soon receive SMS alerts inviting them to review the marketing permissions they once handed out, often without a second thought.

For years, customers have been able to block or allow promotional messages under the 2018 commercial communication rules. In theory, businesses were meant to record these permissions in a Digital Consent Registry. In practice, older consents stuck in paper forms, in-store systems and scattered databases made the system patchy and opaque. Consumers had no simple way to see or revoke what they had already agreed to, leaving the promise of a clean consent framework largely unfulfilled.

TRAI and RBI are now trying to fix that. Their Digital Consent Acquisition pilot brings together nine telecom operators and eleven major banks including SBI, PNB, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Axis Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank and Canara Bank. Over recent months, they have built a shared platform and begun uploading sample batches of legacy consents to test how well the new system works.

Only a small group of customers will be looped into this test phase. Those whose past consents have been uploaded may receive a message from short code 127000. The SMS will carry a secure link leading to a consent management page run by their mobile operator. There, users can browse the consents listed against their number and decide whether to keep them, tweak them or pull the plug entirely.

No financial details will be asked for at any stage and acting on the message is optional. Those who do not receive an SMS can relax as the pilot is deliberately limited in scale. A wider rollout is expected only after the system proves it can handle the country’s vast tangle of old permissions.

If all goes to plan, this quiet pilot could set the stage for a cleaner, clearer and far more consumer-friendly consent regime.