As everyone knows it is illegal to send spam without some things in place. The Electronic Communications and Transactions Act, 2002 make it an offence to send unsolicited email without specific options for the visitor. Starfish Corporate Gifting and Sulaco New Media seem to think having non working links on their website is good enough.
Starfish Gifting has the following on their email, When the unsubscribe link is clicked I get the page below the orange text.
| You received this email because you are subscribed to the Starfish Corporate Gifts mailing list | Please click HERE to unsubscribe | | If you received this email in error or did not subscribe to the Starfish Corporate Gifts mailing list, please report this on our Website | | E-mail Marketing by Sulaco New Media |
So lets analyse this in terms of clause 45 of the act.
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
Well that doesn’t work… does it?
(b) with the identifying particulars of the source from which that person obtained the consumer’s personal information, on request of the consumer.
In their list it tells me I am subscribed, I never did. I am sure I would have remembered saying, Yes you may send me pictures of gift ideas. I am really keen on safety equipment. My job is really dangerous, A hard hat will stop the ceiling from dropping on my head while I sit here coding.
(2) No agreement is concluded where a consumer has failed to respond to an unsolicited communication.
Not only did I not fail to communicate, I phoned the company and told them to delete the database as I am sure nobody wants their spam. I am sure as hell not going to confirm an email address for a spammer if their unsubscribe link fails. Guessing email addresses from domain names is no different to harvesting. I know the email address used by these spammers from Starfish has not been published anywhere, I never give it to anyone either. It’s not one of my usuals. If I had subscribed the email address would have had the word starfish in it, I roll that way. Even my facebook email address is not used anywhere else.
(3) Any person who fails to comply with or contravenes subsection (1) is guilty of an offence and liable, on conviction, to the penalties prescribed in section 89(1).
(4) Any person who sends unsolicited commercial communications to a person who has advised the sender that such communications are unwelcome, is guilty of an offence and liable, on conviction, to the penalties prescribed in section 89(1).
I decided to contact their hosts, Sulaco new media who proceded to insist on my giving them an email address that their link failed to remove from a database built by a spammer. Sulaco New media refused to acknowledge that they harvested my email address and would not tell me where it came from. So lets see if we can get some joy from the SAP
Update:
They deleted every single mention of McLaren from their database, they also deleted all emails to a specific domain, I call that a result. At least 7 people are no longer being spammed, now find my Gmail, Telkomsa and Mweb addresses and remove them as well.
Tags: Spam, Sulaco New Media