Want info from a web page? SMS it to yourself

Stuart Corner
Monday, 05 November 2007 06:19

Your IT - Home IT

An Australian entrepreneur has developed a feature that can be added to a website to enable anyone browsing the site to have information sent to their mobile phone as an SMS.

The choice of information can be pre-determined by the site owner or can be any text on the page selected by the user. Shaun Church, the developer of the service, SMSwebinfo , says he came up with the idea after suffering the frustration of having to write down or print off a series of store locations and contact details from web sites.

The functionality can be added to a web site for a one off fee of $299 plus a $88.00 annual fee. Website owners have the option of either paying for the SMS messages (18 cents inc GST) or of the end user being charged for these (25 cents inc GST).

However while the service is being touted as a benefit to users to gather information from web sites, it is clear that some web site owners see it primarily as means of harvesting mobile phone numbers for marketing campaigns. In the customer testimonials section on the SMSwebinfo web site, one customer says: "We use SMSwebinfo to capture our visiting website customer’s mobile phone numbers, and broadcast SMS to them our upcoming events and promotions. The functionality available in this software is great and has allowed us to direct market to our new and existing customers."

This is not made clear to end users when they register to use the service: they see a statement saying "all registrations are confidential".  Nor, so far as iTWire could ascertain, is there any means of users opting not to receive unsolicited SMS from web sites using the SMSwebinfo service.

iTWire emailed SMSwebinfo seeking clarification of how the service operates, but received no response.