Across South Africa, consumers continue to be bombarded with unwanted spam emails, SMSes, and calls, often from companies they have already asked to stop contacting them.
A recent VOC News poll found that the majority of respondents either block these communications or simply ignore and delete them.
Member of the Information Regulator, Alison Tilley, acknowledged the frustration and said many businesses still ignore unsubscribe requests despite existing legislation.
“I agree that it’s incredibly frustrating, and I think it’s frustrating for us as a regulator as well. The difficulty is that, while we do have the legislation and mechanisms for enforcement, the behaviour continues. You are supposed to ask us for consent to market to people, if they’re not a customer of yours, if they haven’t already consented to it, and if you ask people to stop, they should stop,” Tilley said.
Listen to the full interview below:
Pheto Ntaba, spokesperson for the National Consumer Commission, said the commission is working to establish an official “Opt-Out” registry to better protect consumers from spam.
“Where we are as the National Consumer Commission now, under Section 11 of the CPA, is to establish what is called the opt-out registry, and that is going to actually make it easier for South African consumers to say, I no longer want to receive communication from these companies, be it email, SMS, calls, or posts. They should not contact me to sell any product,” Ntaba explained.
Listen to the full interview below:
The new registry is expected to give consumers more control over unwanted communications and strengthen enforcement against businesses that violate consent regulations.
VOC News
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