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It's proving to be a good year for consumers fed up with being hit from all sides by spam - marketing messages they neither ask for nor want.
The latest "leave me alone" tool to come our way are new regulations - effective from today - that make it compulsory for companies that send SMSs within South Africa to give consumers an easy opt-out.
All you have to do is hit reply, enter the word "Stop" and then send.
Standard sms rates will apply.
The regulations have been introduced by the industry regulator, the Wireless Applications Service Provider Association (Waspa), to spare consumers having to go through the process of lodging complaints on the Waspa website.
Waspa's code of conduct states that consumers can only receive commercial SMSs when they have requested the message or have "a direct and recent prior commercial relationship with the message originator, and would reasonably expect to receive marketing communications from them". (Yet another reason not to provide your cellphone number on every form.)
"From most complaints, it was clear that there was a need to set up a simpler, standardised opt-out mechanism," said Dr Pieter Streicher, the managing director of BulkSMS.com, who also sits on Waspa's management committee.
"They may once have provided their cellphone number for some purpose a while ago, but they're still getting notifications of store sales, restaurant specials and the like, and they would rather not."
This new "stop" reply service should end those smss, and if it doesn't, the consumer will have to lodge a complaint on the Waspa website.
Totally unsolicited smss were illegal, Streicher said, and Waspa had issued stiff fines to service providers found to have been sending these - and even suspended the messaging services of a few.
Waspa stipulates that the reply "STOP" procedure must be included at the start of any messaging service, for example: "You have subscribed to the Corner Surfshop free daily SMS surf report. Reply STOP to opt out."
Staying with spam stopping, earlier this year the Direct Marketing Association of South Africa (DMASA) launched its opt-out register, and by the end of June more than 24 000 people had logged on to its website (www.dmasa.org) to add their names to the register, thereby removing their names from mailing lists used by DMASA members.
Now the body has gone one step further, introducing an sms option.
If you don't have Internet access, you can add your name to the "Don't Contact Me" list by smsing "DMA", followed by your ID number, to 34385. This will effectively remove your details from all mailing lists used by DMASA's members.
DMASA developed the opt-out register in response to government legislation to professionalise the industry and curb fly-by-nights that routinely send out masses of unsolicited marketing messages to what Mduli called "unsuspecting consumers".
"It will also curb the on-selling of databases containing personal information," he said.
Hooray to that!
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