Sex education Via SMS

Singapore's renowned "Dr. Love" on Tuesday launched an SMS sex education campaign in Indonesia, the first of its kind in the world's most populous Muslim nation.
Indonesians are invited to send a text message with any sex-related question to a panel of volunteer local doctors who will either send them a message back or use their question to help compile information on a website.
The brains behind the idea, Wei Siang Yu, who is nicknamed "Dr. Love" for his flamboyant methods of teaching Singaporeans about sex, told a press briefing his scheme would turn conventional sex education on its head.
"In over one month I think we will get a lot of SMS questions and these SMS questions will be answered and compiled into a pool of questions and answers," he said.
These are to be used to create an artificially intelligent "avatar" or virtual character which will later guide people online to the information they want.
"This is not about putting foreign content in Indonesia. This is for Indonesians to participate in public and community-generated health care," the doctor said.
"This is a revolution of the whole landscape of sex education where now you can ask a question in privacy, anytime anywhere."
One survey cited during the press briefing estimated that some 57 percent of young Indonesians learn about sex through their friends or pornographic movies.
The text message programme will be rolled out to Malaysia next, followed by India and China.

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Selling Sex Via SMS In Kuwait

A short text message sent to local mobile phone users offers what seems to be sexual services - or at least sex talk - over the phone. How did such a service get the numbers of people in Kuwait? What are telecom firms doing to block such unsavory advertisers? Dozens of people in Kuwait recently received this SMS message in Arabic: "Hi! I'm Muneera, call me and I will make you happy and satisfied." This message was sent to subscribers of only one telecommunications provider in Kuwait. The messages came from another Arab country. Needless to say, the services 'Muneera' seems to be offering are illegal in Kuwait.

SMS is a convenient and cheap means of advertising. Its direct to the targeted audience, highly likely to be read and if crafted well, sure to catch the attention of the mobile phone user. SMS ads also cost less than making cold calls to sell products. Many department stores, hotels and other service providers take the mobile numbers of their customers and send them SMS them about upcoming sales and promotions. Other companies buy lists of mobile numbers - either from a telecommunications firm or from a data list provider.

Many people are surprised when they receive promotional messages on their mobiles although they are not the customers of this company. Many simply delete the invasive SMS. But sometimes, this type of advertising can go too far. For an Arab Muslim country, pornographic messages or other services advertising sexual products are unacceptable.

Some of those who called 'Muneera' ended up with a KD 50 charge on their phone bill, this reporter has learned. Many others simply saw the SMS as offensive. "I'm married, and I'm not interested in such services or messages. I called the customer service department of the mobile provider, and complained. They promised they will work on banning such messages. I really didn't receive any more messages from this number, thus the customer service department didn't follow-up with me to see if I still do receive such messages or not," said 42 year old Kuwait resident Waleed.

Adults can suspect such weird and just delete them when receive. But what happens when a teen or even younger kids receive such messages?

According to a local telecommunications provider, the messages are being sent randomly. A customer service representative for the firm said "These swindlers are simply calling randomly any numbers. They know the international code, and then they only choose seven numbers randomly," the employee said. "We are working on this subject, and we hope we may definitely ban these messages from reaching our subscribers."

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