September 16, 2009
Stop spamming me, South Africans
Spam sucks. Americans have gotten a lot better at online marketing recently: only double-opt in lists are allowed (by law). Whereas South Africans suck email addresses out of the air and send unsolicited mail (spam) without asking the recipients to opt-in first. I can’t stop them, so the best I can do is publish their email addresses here in the hope spambots will pick them up, and send them lots of spam. Justice? I hope so.
[Update: turns out double-opt in lists aren't required, and South Africans can subscribe people to their newsletters without their permission. In my book, this exactly what spam is, but South African law doesn't agree.]
[Update: I've deleted Diane's details from this post. After emailing her, she promptly responded saying that I'd been on her database for over a year and only sent 3 emails in that time (which is true) and that I could've unsubscribed earlier, which is also true. She denies being a spammer and wants me to only go after bigger companies. While she's incorrect that she's not a spammer (i.e. she sent me unsolicited commercial email) she does say that she spends a lot of money monthly making sure she complies with the marketing regulations. Diane, legally you're in the right (i.e. you can subscribe anyone you like to your newsletter) but if you do that, you're breaching internet etiquette - double opt-in lists are the way to go. I hope you've stopped subscribing random people to your list.]
The Diamond Life @ The Bank, Rosebank, Johannesburg, Sat 19 September
Sent out by anythinggoes.co.za on Sept4 2009, this spam is about some new club launch in Jozi. Didn’t subscribe, lads.
C2IT Computer Hardware
c2it@wec2it.com sales@c2it.co.za prize@c2it.co.za
These guys make me chuckle. Their disclaimer at the bottom of their newsletter says,
We support responsible and ethical email marketing practices. Please know that we respect your right to be purged from this marketing campaign. Removal from this email distribution list is automatically enforced by our email delivery system. Please click here to start the process for email deletion.
Wow, they “respect my right to be purged from this marketing campaign.” What about my right to not be added to it in the first place?!?! They also say,
The person addressed in the email is the sole authorised recipient.
Authorised by who? Not by me, that’s for sure.
We encourage and support best practices in responsible email marketing.
Great! Best practices are double-opt in lists, otherwise you run the risk of annoying some random person out there who posts your website and your email addresses on his blog. I look forward to seeing if this post shows up higher on Google listings on searches for C2IT Computer Hardware.
These guys are also very, very annoyed by C2IT’s spammy practices.
[Updated: some Eagle-eyed car group selling Fords and Mazdas]
[Updated: kaleidoscope advertising and marketing say they got my name from Google.]
Comments(11)
Roger Saner is a web platform developer (using 
I completely support your action against spammers, but I wonder if by posting their details on your blog, you’re actually giving them free advertising? I suppose the shame factor could work if you get an actual person’s name, but I doubt a company or brand would be too troubled. Maybe it would help to report them at hellopeter.com or some similar site that act as a barometer of reputation.
Hey Roger,
thanks for this blog, I completely agree with you, although I must say I haven’t had this type of experience. I ‘only’ get spams from random people who are always ’sorry for disturbing me’, I never read what they want before deleting them.
I don’t agree with Rudi’s free advertising comment. People tend to talk/blog more about bad service than good service, and I for one would not use a company that someone gives me bad feedback on.
@Rudi: good point, but I’m adding in rel=”nofollow” tags into my links so that search engines don’t rack up the linklove.
A company or brand might not care, but what if lots of sites posted things like “C2IT are spammers – don’t buy their stuff!” and it actually started hurting their business?
@Stephanie: ja, I’m the same – I live on Google. If I Google someone to find out their reputation, and there’s lot of sites saying that they’re a spammer, I will not buy from them.
Yip, goes like that for most people actually. The other week a friend told me that a beauty salon would not accept her recently expired voucher (this was before the law was passed that now forbids this), but none of us who heard about this are ever going to visit that salon.
Okay, okay, I’m sold on your strategy. Maybe we should start a name and shame website for spammers? Maybe there is one already? I just got spammed by @lantic – probably my most high profile spam so far. You’ll like this: they have a double opt out process “In an effort to protect our Subscribers from deceptive cancellation requests”. Protect our subscribers? Deceptive cancellation requests? It’s like spam is an exclusive service they are offering to their top customers! And is there a shady underground of hackers who go around unsubscribing defenseless spam recipients?
[...] wonder if I should keep on posting about South African spammers given they’re not actually breaking the law, but are still spamming. What do you [...]
Well I am the notorious Diane that was apparently spamming Roger, I am happy that it has started a full on anti spam campaign, but I must say it also makes me question just who decided what is spam – my particular company started a year ago, my personal data base that I have always used is property investors who have worked with me for over four years and I do every part of their personal investment. Just some background, Roger has been receiving my member group email for almost a year now, with unsubscribe options etc, his email address I see is in an email list I received from my a fellow colleague who works in the music industry and property industry. To find out now where he obtained Roger’s email address is almost impossible, but never the less when I heard from Roger now, for the first time in almost a year that he wanted me to remove him from my email list, I did so immediately and apologised for any inconvienance. I dont think its fair that Roger bases his anti spamming campaign on an email received from myself. I hate spamming just as much as we all do, because Roger feels something is spam does it give him the right to throw my name all over the internet, make sure if people google my name the first thing they see is spammer – I dont think thats fair Roger, after you received the first email in September 2008, makes me wonder who is really trying to get free advertising from this and damaging a fellow young South African that is starting to get a business going and following all the right steps like unsubscribe options, etc – but anyway good blog – glad its getting spoken about and maybe it is something that needs to be addressed so we all know exactly where we stand when it comes to emailing, just remember it costs me to send emails to my data base too, and the last thing I want is it going to people who dont want it – thats pretty pointless, especially in the type of work I do.
Thanks Diane
@Diane: thanks for stopping by! Can’t be too fun to google yourself and see “spammer”, I guess. I’ve removed your details in my post above, as I believe you’re doing a reasonable amount to ensure you’re within South Africa’s law. Shortly your name will be removed from Google (when it re-indexes this site), and I’ll also remove it from twitter, so that someone googling you will not see those results. You can breathe a sigh of relief now!
Let’s clear a few things up. You wrote: “just who decided what is spam”. The definition of spam is “unsolicited commercial email” i.e. any email which is sent in bulk for the purposes of making money where the recipient did not ask for it. This is not “my” definition, Diane: check out privacy.org and wikipedia.
The point is that individual people don’t like to think of themselves as spammers, but it’s true: if you send unsolicited commercial emails (whether to 500 people or 20 million people, whether you’re advertising property or viagra) you are a spammer.
Which leaves a delicate gap for the genuine email marketer, i.e. someone who has a great product and wants to reach their target audience using email, but who is wary of being accused of spam (which can have a huge negative impact on their business).
South African law says that it’s legal to subscribe anyone you like to your list, provided that you unsubscribe them when they ask, and you tell them where you got their details from.
That’s what the law says, but believe me, if you’re sending bulk unsolicited commercial emails AND subscribing the recipient to your mails without asking them, you’re creating trouble for yourself.
So here’s how to get the best of both worlds (i.e. to get your message out there, and not to be accused of spam).
Firstly, set up a double opt-in list (a website like ymlp.com provides this service).
Secondly, do NOT subscribe people to your newsletter. Rather, add this to the footer of your email: “This is a once-off mailing because we found your address online and thought you’d be interested in our product. If we were wrong, we’re very sorry – you don’t need to do anything because we won’t email you again. If you’d like to subscribe to our newsletter, click here.”
Thirdly, don’t email those people again. Your email is a once-off email to that group – your hope is that your product/service is so compelling that people will choose to subscribe to your newsletter – which is much better for business, because instead of having 1000 people who just delete your email when it arrives (because they didn’t choose to receive it), you now have 100 people who have taken the action of subscribing themselves to your newsletter.
In other words, not only are you not spamming people, you’ve also got a high quality list.
I hope these are helpful suggestions, Diane – I wish a fellow young South African all the best in establishing herself in a difficult market
@Diane: it strikes me that once Google has re-indexed this site and twitter, there will be no mention of you online. Except, of course, for your comment above – which might not be the best introduction for people to read if they google you. Why not take control and set up your own website? A wordpress blog would not be a bad place to start
Thanks Roger – really great tips, and I will definetely use them. Just some background on how we started, I have worked for various investment property groups and obviously had my database, when I started with my new company I was handed data bases from fellow colleagues who stated that these were clients that would be interested in what I had to offer – its pretty specialised what I do, now you can imagine the task ahead of me at that point, I created lists – the red, yellow and white list – the red list is clients email addresses that were given to me and to be honest cause me more pain then its worth. When we started our mailer, we did research into what would have to be placed on the mailer to follow “law” – and this went well, however the admin involved is massive – finally after a year we seem to be down to a proper working list – I have had to employ an email marketing company to assit me in sending out the email and assist me in monitoring the data base – that costs quite a lot but whats great is they offer a service showing who is forwarding the emails, opening them , deleting them etc – so I am getting for the first time my proper figures, and I really cant wait – hopefully I can trim the list down considerably. You might ask well how do yo get stuck in a position with a data base that you cant manage – simple – have a few laptops that you have used at previous jobs, start a company and want to get in touch with all the people you have met over the years, ask a guy that says he knows about IT to offer a solution, he downloads a program that you can use on all your back CD’s that basically sucks out all the email addresses on it – you get left with a list of tons of names, and then you start, 35 000 email addresses, days and nights of sifting through them to see which ones you recognise.. nightmare – and yes it is my fault – I wish I had just kept proper lists going through the years, I wish my admin was better- but its what I had to work with.
Yip – my website is being built, taken alot of money and time but getting there, and thanks for the tips, I will send them on to my web guys to check out – I will also add in that ” once off” line but I really dont want any email address’ that I shouldnt have. Not worth it
Whom ever emails tons of people they have just gathered on line is really crazy, its so much admin, and the hit rate must be terrible, I dont even read jokes that are sent to me by friends I just delete them.
Something just to check out Roger – from what I have gathered from the ECA –
check out sec 45 sec 1( b) if you read the definition of personal information – it seems to be outlined to protect a consumer’s details like banking details etc, it could be argued that it does not mention email address – very broad.
sec 45 (2) – the way I read it, it seems that if a person doesnt respond to the email to unsubscribe etc – no agreement is concluded, and if there is no agreement concluded then the person is not a consumer? and then does the Act still cover the person receiving the email?
and of course one thing that is for sure is you can only email that person once and then not again if they ask to be unsubscribed.
So it seems the Act that we look to for protection against spamming is really set up to protect people purchasing goods, from their personal details going out.
Good luck Roger with what you are doing – to be honest, there are many loop holes in the ECA
Thanks again and sorry for my rambling Cheers Di