| br!ghtshark |

>> This is article number three in a series of three, being,”Spam Reply Template“, “Getting some info together” and this article.

Without much further ado, herewith a template that you can use to send some demands to companies that sell your private information to spammers.

Dear Member1, Member2, Accounting Officer,

I have been receiving a number of unsolicited, spam, messages from various South African businesses over the past couple of months. I have been responding to these messages with the following communication:

Please remove me from your ALL of you mailing lists with immediate effect (including and not limited to any or all information you have about me). I categorically state that I have never requested any emails from XXX never heard of them and have never given permission for XXX to contact me.

In this regard, I refer to the ECT Act of 2002:

Electronic Communications and Transactions Act. 2002

Chapter VII – Consumer Protection

45. Unsolicited goods, services or communications

(Section 45 of the ECT Act)

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’s personal information, on request

of the consumer.

As such, in terms of section 45(1)(b), I would like to formally request the source from which my details was obtained. The full act can be obtained here: http://www.acts.co.za/ect_act/index.htm.

Failure to provide me with such information in terms of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act, is an offense punishable by a fine or imprisonment of up to 12 months, as per the act (section 45(4) read with section 89(1)), and will be reported to the South African Police Service as such.

Sincerely,

YOUR NAME

By way of this, I have now determined that you are the source of my personal details being distributed, in fact selling it for gain. In this regard, I would like to start off this interaction with demanding that you remove all and any of my email addresses and other contact detail you hold about me from your databases.

Going further, I hereby formally request, where you obtained my personal information, as per the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act. I confirm that I make this request from you as the principal member of XXX CC, with XXX CC’d in as the registered accounting officer of the said CC.

In this regard I would like to confirm that sections 332(2) and 332(5) of the Criminal Procedure Act reads as follows: “In any prosecution against a corporate body, a director or servant of that corporate body shall be cited, as representative of that corporate body, as the offender, and thereupon the person so cited may, as such representative, be dealt with as if he were the person accused of having committed the offence in question:” and “When an offence has been committed, whether by the performance of any act or by the failure to perform any act, for which any corporate body is or was liable to prosecution, any person who was, at the time of the commission of the offence, a director or servant of the corporate body shall be deemed to be guilty of the said offence, unless it is proved that he did not take part in the commission of the offence and that he could not have prevented it, and shall be liable to prosecution therefor, either jointly with the corporate body or apart therefrom, and shall on conviction be personally liable to punishment therefor.”

I have confirmed your contact details and the fact that you receive your emails this specific email address and as such I infer that you will receive my email timeously. As such, I am looking forward to your positive response hereto by close of business on DATE A WEEK FROM NOW, which I would submit is more than reasonable in light of your regular access to your email. Failing the aforesaid, it is my sincere intention to lay a criminal complaint against OFFENDING CC, citing you as the responsible member of the CC, as per the registration held at CIPRO (see below). I trust that we will be able to address this issue amicably and that the aforesaid would not be necessary.

I earnestly await your further response.

Sincerely,

YOUR NAME

If you get no response from the contact-selling-co, you should be well positioned to lay a criminal complaint against the members of the CC (or, directors of the company). It might be prudent to send a copy of your email to the company’s registered address by registered post (courts love registered post, especially more so than email at least), maybe even a copy to the acounting officer’s address (again using registered post). This you can also give to the police to help them, together with all the research on where to find the offenders.

I would love to hear from any readers who had success with this approach… Hopefully the new up and coming Protection of Personal Information Bill (soon to be an Act) will protect consumers even more. Once the Bill has been promulgated into an Act, I will look update the templates. Until such time, Good luck in fighting the good fight!