Wednesday, September 08, 2010

Dodgy business at Banbric North

How's this for dodgy business dealings? You run a building company and you offer to one of your subcontractors (WoodWise) to send out email spam on their behalf. So they take all the flack from angry mail recipients. When I confronted the guy from Banbric he was unhelpful and unrepentant. Clearly he thinks he is above the law. I wonder whether he treats all his customers this way?
Section 45 of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act, no 25 of 2002. states the following:
45. (1) Any person who sends unsolicited commercial communications to consumers, must provide the consumer—­
(a) with the option to cancel his or her subscription to the mailing list of that person; and
(b) with the identifying particulars of the source from which that person obtained the consumer'spersonal information, on request of the consumer.
So although they provided the "opt-out" option, if they cannot identify the particulars of the source, then they are breaking the law. So far they have been unwilling or unable to provide these details.
And the company that sent the spam has no idea where the addresses came from, and makes no effort whatsoever to filter out emails on the DMA's Do Not Contact list. So in spite of their "no spam" logo, they don't actually make any effort to stop spam: it's their business to send out emails, so why bother?
Oh, and did I mention that the Banbric North web site distributes malware?

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