Open Petition 001 · For the Senate
Gmail already forces this on senders. Philippine law doesn't.
Every promotional message sent to a Filipino should have an exit that works on the first tap. No login. No reply-YES-to-confirm. No preference center with fourteen checkboxes. One tap, and it stops within 48 hours.
What it is
A proposed law requiring any business that sends promotional email, SMS, app push notifications, or messaging-app broadcasts to people in the Philippines to include an unsubscribe that works in a single action, costs nothing, and is honored within 48 hours.
It doesn't ban marketing. It doesn't touch receipts, OTPs, or delivery updates. It sets a floor on the exit, names a regulator, and attaches a real penalty to a broken unsubscribe link.
What you get
No account, no login, no form, no "tell us why you're leaving."
A company can't sit on it or squeeze in one last campaign while it processes.
Email, SMS, app push, and Viber broadcasts all follow the same standard instead of four.
Not through a sister brand, not through a "new" list, not six months later.
Opting out never costs a peso, and the link stays live for at least 60 days.
A named regulator, a per-day penalty, and a complaint that actually goes somewhere.
Where we are now
The Data Privacy Act (RA 10173) gives you the right to withdraw consent, and the National Privacy Commission says withdrawing should be as easy as giving it. That's a principle, not a standard. No required mechanism, no deadline, and nothing that happens to a company whose unsubscribe link is broken.
Gmail and Yahoo have required one-click unsubscribe, honored in 48 hours, from any sender pushing 5,000+ messages a day since 2024. Google set a stricter rule for Filipino inboxes than Philippine law did. If you get less spam in Gmail than in your SMS, that's the reason.
The bill, in plain words
This is the whole thing. Every clause is copied from a rule that already works somewhere else, and the source is named so nobody has to take our word for it.
Anyone sending 500 or more commercial messages in a 30-day period to people in the Philippines, on any channel. The floor exists so a neighborhood store texting twenty regulars isn't covered.
The opt-out must work in a single tap, click, or reply. It cannot demand an account or any detail the sender doesn't already hold. It stays live 60 days after the message is sent.
Stricter than the 10 business days the US allows. Defensible because Gmail already enforces 48 hours, so every large sender has built it.
Clicking the link, replying STOP, flipping the in-app toggle, or writing to the published address. A sender cannot decide that only one route is the valid one.
They may confirm you're out. Once. That message carries no offer and no attempt to talk you back in.
Not to a subsidiary, an affiliate, a sister company, an acquired list, or a "new" list. Opting out of one is opting out of all of them for that company.
So are security alerts, legally required notices, messages about a contract you're actually in, and government messages performing a public function. This bill does not ban marketing.
Detailed below. Levels sit inside existing Philippine ranges, so nothing here is an outlier a sponsor has to defend.
Senders keep an opt-out log for two years and produce it on demand. If they can't produce it, your complaint is presumed valid. This is the most effective clause in the bill and it costs the government nothing.
Enforced by the National Privacy Commission, with the NTC on the SMS channel and the DTI where the sender is a retailer. One complaint portal. Takes effect six months after publication.
The teeth
A rule without a penalty is a suggestion, which is exactly what the Data Privacy Act's withdrawal principle turned out to be.
| Offense | Penalty |
|---|---|
| First violation | ₱50,000 / day, per substantiated complaint, running from the 49th hour until the opt-out is honored. Capped at ₱2,000,000. |
| Repeat within 24 months | Up to ₱5,000,000, plus possible suspension of the sender's authority to send bulk commercial messages. |
| Willful, or ordered by an officer | The responsible officer is personally liable, on top of the corporate penalty. |
| Fake or spoofed sender ID | Referred under RA 11934, which already covers it. |
Why these numbers. The Data Privacy Act runs ₱500,000 to ₱5,000,000 and the SIM Registration Act runs ₱100,000 to ₱1,000,000. These sit inside both ranges, so a sponsor never has to defend an outlier. For comparison, the US CAN-SPAM Act allows roughly $53,000 per email, with no cap.
Where it comes from
Three regimes already solve this problem. The bill takes the strongest clause from each, which is also the answer to "has this been tested anywhere?"
Opt-out in every commercial email, live 30+ days, honored in 10 business days, no extra information, no fee. Up to ~$53,000 per email, no cap.
We take: no-extra-information, and the per-message penalty. 2003, FTC-enforced.
Consent can be revoked "in any reasonable manner." Honored within 10 business days. Senders limited to one confirmation text, with no marketing in it.
We take: any-reasonable-method, and the one-confirmation cap. Effective April 2025.
RFC 8058 one-click unsubscribe, honored within 48 hours, required of any sender pushing 5,000+ messages a day.
We take: the one-click standard and the 48-hour clock. In force since 2024.
The one place we go further than the US. We use Gmail's 48 hours instead of CAN-SPAM's 10 business days. Any sender big enough to be covered already built this in 2024 to keep reaching Gmail inboxes. The bill asks them to apply it to Filipinos on every channel, not only the one Google polices.
Who we're aiming at
Senators are elected nationally, so every signer anywhere in the country is a constituent of all 24. That removes the hardest part of a House campaign, which is proving numbers inside one specific district, and it means one packet delivered 24 times instead of a per-district breakdown nobody has time to read.
This bill can start in the Senate. Only appropriation, revenue, and tariff bills must originate in the House, and this is none of those.
Your city and province still matter. For a nationally elected senator the persuasive number isn't a district count, it's geographic spread. Two thousand signatures from 60 provinces is a national mandate. Two thousand from Metro Manila is a Metro Manila complaint.
Any senator, any party, is welcome to file it. No exclusivity, nobody is charged, and the first office to say yes gets it.
Add your name
Six fields, about twenty seconds. One email to confirm, then nothing until there's news worth sending.
Why each field
No home address, no birthday, no ID number, no mobile number. A petition doesn't need them, and holding them would make us exactly the kind of data collector this bill exists to rein in.
Have your say
The text above is frozen at v1.0. If everyone could edit it, no senator would ever be holding the same document twice, and there would be nothing to sign. So the bill gets versions and your comments ride alongside it. When enough comments push the same way, the bill becomes v1.1 and the comments that changed it are attached to the new version.
Every comment goes to the Senate. Not a summary, not a count. The full text, with the signer's city and province, in the same packet as the signature list. Personal accounts of being unable to opt out are the part that survives a committee hearing, so specifics beat agreement.
This is what a signer comment looks like once the database is wired. Comments are published after a moderation pass, tagged by type, and sortable by votes so the concerns that matter most to the most people rise to the top of the packet.
Sign the petition first, then use the link in your confirmation email. That way every comment sits behind a verified signature, which is what makes them worth forwarding.
After you sign
One link, one tap. Your signature counts the moment you click it, and the same email carries your comment link.
Spread is the number that persuades a nationally elected senator. One friend in a province we haven't reached is worth more than ten in yours.
The goals climb in steps because a single distant number is discouraging and we'd rather be honest. At roughly 1,000 verified signatures across 40 provinces, an office will take a meeting. That's when the first approach happens, not at the end.
Changed your mind?
Every email from us has a withdraw link at the bottom. Click it and you're out: off the list, out of the count, and your comments come down. No login, no form, no "are you sure," and no reason required. Done within 48 hours, the same standard this bill asks of everyone else.
Enter your reference number and the email you signed with. We'll send a fresh withdraw link to that address. We don't withdraw on the spot, so nobody can remove you just by knowing your reference number.