When posting please remember that you are wanting to create a business relationship - whether a contract or work relationship. Use your post to present a professional image of yourself & if relevant, your organisation. In addition to what you are looking for, provide your name, title, and contact details.
Unsolicited email is, was and will continue to be a frustration. It seems that the amount of companies or people trying to sell something are quadrupling every month. Surely it is understandable in the era of information that every possible way will be explored to generate some form of income. But, unsolicited email is still an illegal offense carrying a 12 month imprisonment penalty. So before you "click" send, think twice. Here is the legal supporting references, written in the form of an email, which can be used to reply to those that just won't stop! You are welcome to copy, paste and use as is.
______________________________________________________________________________________
Dear Sir/ Madam,
As your email is an approach for the purpose of direct marketing which relies upon personal information which I did not provide to you, your message constitutes an unsolicited communication in terms of section 45 of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act (Act 25 of 2002) (ECTA), as read with section 11 of the Consumer Protection Act (Act 68 of 2008)(CPA) or alter-natively, as the case may be, Section 69 of the Protection of Personal Information Act (Act 4 of 2013) (POPIA) In terms of the acts listed above, this message serves as a notification that I do not wish to receive any further communications from you or your agents. Kindly confirm that you will discontinue all future communication in this regard.
Please note that a failure to comply with this request constitutes a criminal offense in terms of section 45 of the ECTA and that the continued receipt of unsolicited communications will lead to prosecution. Additionally, I hereby request that you immediately disclose where you obtained my contact details, as per section 45(1) of the ECTA and/or section 22(1) of the POPIA. Failure to respond to this request also constitutes a criminal offense.
Section 45 (4) provides that “any person who sends unsolicited commercial communications to a person who has advised the sender that such communications are unwelcome, is guilty of an offense and liable, on conviction, to the penalties prescribed in section 89 (1)”.
Therefore spam senders who ignore or refuse to act on the opt-out instructions issued by a spam recipient may face criminal sanctions. The penalty provided for by section 89(1) is “a fine of R36 000.00 or imprisonment for a period not exceeding 12 months”. Section 45(2) provides that “no agreement is concluded where a consumer has failed to respond to an unsolicited communication” thus ensuring that consumers are not forced into contracts simply because they failed to respond to spam.
I note that your original message did not provide me with an option to cancel false subscriptions to your mailing list, as required by section 45(1) of the ECTA and/or section 69(4) of the POPIA. This means that you already have committed an offense in terms of the respective Acts and may be subject to prosecution.
Should you wish to familiarise yourself with the relevant legislation, or check my facts, a copy of the ECTA, CPA and POPIA are available on-line via the Government's web site and can be found here:
- http://www.gov.za/sites/www.gov.za/files/37536_Act1of2014ElecCommAmend7Apr2014.pdf
- http://www.gov.za/sites/www.gov.za/files/32186_467_0.pdf
- http://www.gov.za/sites/www.gov.za/files/37067_26-11_Act4of2013ProtectionOfPersonalInfor_correct.pdf
Your urgent co-operation in this regard would be appreciated. Failure to respond immediately to this email will result in immediate enforcing of the said actions specified.
