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THE
majority of the country’s mobile-phone users still do
take seriously the text messages they receive about a
natural calamity, say an earthquake, that’s about to
take place hours away.
But a
text message that circulated Monday concerning a
“radiation wave” did not alarm many.
“The
market is already mature enough to see hoaxes like
this,” said Globe Wireless Consumer Business Group head
Ferdz de la Cruz.
According to the text message, “There will be a big
radiation wave circulating through the Handyphone towers
at 11 p.m. tonight [Monday] which is very dangerous to
humans. Please inform your friends not to keep their
phones with them. Please forward.”
The
sender of the text message also appealed to switch off
all the Handyphones Monday night. Hanydphones is the
cellular brand of Globe.
According to de la Cruz, SMS (short message service)
traffic within Globe’s network was normal on Monday. The
cellular firm normally handles 500 to 700 text messages
in a day. As of end-April, Globe subscribers stood at
21.7 million.
“There
was no unusual uptick in our hotline about it,” added de
la Cruz.
Some
subscribers of Smart Communications Inc. also received
the same text message. When sought for comment, company
spokesperson Mon Isberto said the message was definitely
a hoax. “Remember the story about the big earthquake
that was supposed to happen here after China? This is
another one of those things,” he said.
Edgardo
Cabarrios, director at the National Telecommunications
Commission (NTC), observed that many mobile phone users
do pass these text messages to their friends and
relatives. “Many do still believe that these calamity
warnings are bound to happen. So, the tendency is to
forward these text messages to their relatives and
friends. They do so because they find these text
messages alarming,” he said.
He said
the NTC has no authoritative powers to determine whether
a text message is a hoax or not. “Text messaging is a
private communicating tool between two persons. What
should be done is that the agency concerned should
publicly declare if the text message is bound to happen
or not.”
For
instance, the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and
Seismology (Phivolcs) immediately issued an advisory
that earthquakes could not be predicted, when text
messages claimed last week that a Hawaiian science
agency had predicted a strong earthquake would occur in
the Philippines.
As for
the “radiation wave” risk on Monday, Cabarios said: “In
this case, if there is radiation concerned, it should be
the Department of Health that should clarify to the
public if there is a certain level of radiation that the
public should be alarmed about.” |
