While South Africans are collectively bombarded by tens of thousands of spam calls daily – there is a way to block these types of cold calls.<\/p>\n
The Direct Marketing Association of South Africa provides a platform through which you can add yourself to the National Opt-out Database<\/a><\/strong> – a list of no-go contacts.<\/p>\n The database\u00a0helps to ensure your address, email address, telephone and cell number are no longer available to marketing related companies.<\/p>\n Registration on the database however, does require a lot of sensitive details, including a South African ID number and a valid email address or phone number.<\/p>\n An additional snag in the system is that it is limited to organisations which are part of the DMA – which may not be all those companies who cold call you.<\/p>\n All\u00a0companies registered with the DMA are required to check their marketing lists against the database.<\/p>\n According to a report by MoneyWeb, marketers get your details from a number of sources, with very little regulation or control over such ‘information trading’.<\/p>\n Moneyweb’s report<\/a> states that the direct marketing industry directly employs around 150,000 who make on average 1,600 calls a month.<\/p>\n Global number identifier and spam prevention app, Truecaller noted in late 2015\u00a0that its community has reported over 800,000 spam calls in South Africa – with as many as 50,000 spam calls daily.<\/p>\n The Protection of Personal Information Act (POPI Act) is a law in South Africa which holds companies responsible for the manner in which they attain and deal with information. However, the fledgling law remains largely unregulated in the country.<\/p>\n Private information is traded through various means – from opt-in transactions from financial institutions (where you agree to third-party marketing in exchange for rewards programmes), to instances where former managers or employees sell off data they have on a physical flash drive once they leave their companies.<\/p>\n An office of the Information Regulator has been established to enforce the POPI Act, and to deal with companies trading in your personal information. Companies have a 24 month “grace period” to fall in-line with the new laws.<\/p>\n However, short of dealing with each individual call – the National Opt-out Database currently provides the most effective way of dealing with spam calls on a larger scale.<\/p>\n South Africans illegally charged by spam SMS advert<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n South African ISP fined R10,000 for spamming<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\nMore on spam<\/h3>\n