Danie van der Merwe

Spam callers face penalties of up to R1,000,000 in South Africa

2026-08-03 22:09:17

gadgeteer@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

Spam callers face penalties of up to R1,000,000 in South Africa

So a few amendments made, but what I really am happy to finally see, is the loophole closed around marketers opting in or not: “Any direct marketer who is not registered on the opt-out registry is prohibited from contacting consumers for marketing purposes”.

They have to pay to register, and abide with monthly conditions, and of course there is now potentially a hefty fine too.

I suppose the only issue is going to be around “foreign marketing” but so far all my spam callers had seemed to be for South African companies.

See https://mybroadband.co.za/news/telecoms/660726-spam-callers-face-penalties-of-up-to-r1000000-in-south-africa.html

#technology #southafrica #spam

technology southafrica spam

FokOffMense is South Africa's spam block and POPIA toolkit

2026-07-23 22:25:12

Danie van der Merwe

gadgeteer@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

FokOffMense is South Africa's spam block and POPIA toolkit

Block community-flagged spam on Android, send formal POPIA opt-outs, and monitor breaches — one SA account, no ads. iOS users can use the website, but there is no iOS app yet (probably also because iOS does not allow apps to take control of the dialler, which is why TrueCaller was so broken for me when I had an iPhone).

This app actually takes control of the Android dialler (otherwise calls cannot be blocked) and accesses / adds to the blocked numbers list on the phone.

It is not a caller ID app so you won't see the names identified of callers, but if the number has been reported by 10 or more other users as spam, it will be blocked (as well as for SMS). You have the option of reporting a number in the app to the community, and you can go even further to file a formal POPIA report, which is mailed out through the app's server, so not from your own e-mail.

The 10 number requirement is to stop individuals trying to block their spouse for example from everyone. But looking at the list I see some genuine call centres I need to get calls from (who probably spam non-customers) so it seems you can select those numbers from the Community Shield, or not.

There is a free tier to try which gets you 5 POPIA request per month, 5 Community Shields blocks per month, and one e-mail monitor. The next tier is at R29 per month for 45 Community Shield blocks and 5 POPIA requests per month. The Premium tier is R99 per month, and Family tier for R279 per month for up to 5 people. Every plan includes privacy scans, a full exposure report, unlimited spam reports and blocking, and Gmail spam upload and email filters.

Whilst TrueCaller will give caller ID and call blocking, and allow reporting into its crowdsourced block list, it has no POPIA reporting, nor privacy scans, exposure reporting, or Gmail spam filtering.

See https://fokoffmense.co.za

#technology #southafrica #spam

technology spam southafrica

Proton Mail Now Also Lets You Hide Your Real Email Address

2024-03-07 10:52:54

Danie van der Merwe

gadgeteer@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

Proton Mail is one of the best alternatives to Gmail, Outlook, and Apple Mail out there, with end-to-end encryption, tracker blocking, and phishing protection among the features on offer. A free account gets you 1GB of storage and up to 150 messages per day.

The latest feature to be added to Proton Mail is the option to hide your email address: That's where you set up an email alias to provide when you buy something or sign up for a social media service, while keeping your actual email address private. It's something already available on other email clients (like Apple's), and you can get it set up in just a few minutes.

If you're on a paid Proton Mail plan, you can create as many email aliases as you like, while free account users get up to 10 of them.

I like to keep track of every e-mail alias I create, as it gives me a clue as to who has passed my mail address onto others who end up spamming me.

Note if you have your own e-mail domain name, you can often use a catch-all function which lets you create as many, and any, mail addresses you want to at no extra cost. An advantage of this method is, the addresses can follow you no matter what back-end mail provider you switch to in future.

See Proton Mail Now Lets You Hide Your Real Email Address

Set up Proton Mail email aliases and you can hide your email address from marketers, spammers, and hackers.

#technology #spam #email

technology email spam

US approves Google plan to let political emails bypass Gmail spam filter... Many Gmail users are not going to love this

2022-08-12 23:15:23

Danie van der Merwe

gadgeteer@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

The US Federal Election Commission approved a Google plan on Thursday to let campaign emails bypass Gmail spam filters. The FEC's advisory opinion adopted in a 4-1 vote said Gmail's pilot program is permissible under the Federal Election Campaign Act and FEC regulations "and would not result in the making of a prohibited in-kind contribution."

The way I see it is, any e-mail being received by you, which you did not solicit, is spam to you, no matter whether it is a president, the CEO of the golf club, or whoever. Yet again, it seems that politicians (the world over) consider themselves above the laws they created.

In many countries, my own included, there needs to be opt out messages for e-mails and SMS text messages, which if not honoured, become a criminal offence.

But let's watch this one play out, as I suspect more and more users of free services are beginning to realise they have become the product, but that they also have other options, even though change can be very painful (try updating 100+ e-mail address details across your banks, insurance company, medical, etc).

See US approves Google plan to let political emails bypass Gmail spam filter

#technology #politicians #Gmail #spam

Plan came after GOP complaints, but FEC says it doesn't violate ban on contributions.

technology spam gmail politicians

2022-08-13 03:28:30

Ted

florida_ted@diasp.org

Gmail, where user data is the product :-)

How to hide your email from data collectors; Preventing spam and tracking

2021-12-06 20:46:58

Danie van der Merwe

gadgeteer@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

Nowadays, it seems like everyone on the web wants your email. When you give your email address to a site in order to log in or just get some info, many companies will take that as a free pass to do anything from relentlessly spamming you with newsletters to selling your email address to advertisers, who will in turn track you relentlessly.

Thankfully, there are also people building tools that can make things harder for the companies trying to get your email address.

An interesting linked article below but worth also noting you want to set up with a company that will be providing this service still in a few years time. I recall over two decades back I was using the Bigfoot relay service and one day the e-mail relay service just disappeared. That left me with some major issues with changing my login passwords at other sites, as back then they e-mailed a password reset link to you... That said, any e-mail service can disappear ;-)

See How to hide your email from data collectors

#technology #email #privacy #spam #tracking

Make your digital address hard to aggregate.

technology privacy email spam tracking

Anyone else noticed how broken iOS 3rd party caller ID and spam caller protection has become?

2021-11-24 19:03:51

Danie van der Merwe

gadgeteer@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

Let me say up front, I migrated from Android early 2021 back to an iPhone, and I was truly spoilt with how flawlessly Truecaller worked on Android. But whilst becoming extremely disappointed at how crippled Truecaller (paid version) is on iOS, and having then subscribed to Hiya to try as an alternative, and also noticing so much not working, I started to drill deeper into the app store reviews.

What I noticed is many of these 3rd party caller ID / Anti spam call managers show ratings of 4.3 to 4.6 out of 5 start reviews. Looks very good, and there are thousands of reviews over the years... but change the sorting of reviews from 'Most Helpful' to 'Most Recent', and what you now see for the whole of 2021 and back into 2020, is just 1-star reviews and complaints about them no longer working.

It's probably worth noting that this is no coincidence, as it is not the apps themselves, but more likely due to Apple clamping down on the permission these apps can actually access to manage incoming calls. It basically looks like the market has dropped out of being able to ask for subscriptions any longer on these services. It's a great pity as I've been at the mercy of telemarketers and insurance and loans salespeople again this entire year since moving back to iOS. We can criticise Android's fragmentation and sideloading, etc, but at least they offer a solid way of blocking and reporting spam calls, and it's worth paying for that service.

Regretfully, I could not test RoboKiller as it's not available in my country's store, but it similarly seems to have an explosion of 1-star reviews from end of 2019 inwards. As it is, on iOS we do have to contend with trying to ensure the app stays active in the background, but just using Truecaller as the benchmark I have used on Android and iOS, it is like night and day, as far as the workable functionality goes. These apps generally are supposed to provide a caller ID name from crowdsourced info, advise also from that crowdsourced info whether it is a known reported spammer / robocaller, and provide us with a means of reporting / blocking calls we have received.

I really wish Apple would vet the apps that provide this service to either approve them having additional permissions, or else allowing us as users to grant those permissions, so that we also have some fully functional vetting and reporting of spam and robocallers.

See Anyone else noticed how broken iOS 3rd party caller ID and spam caller protection has become? | Gadgeteer

#technology #robocallers #spam #iOS #truecaller #hiya

Let me say up front, I migrated from Android early 2021 back to an iPhone, and I was truly spoilt with how flawlessly Truecaller worked on Android. But whilst becoming extremely disappointed at how crippled Truecaller (paid version) is on iOS, and having then subscribed to Hiya to try as an alternative, and also noticing so much not working, I started to drill deeper into the app store reviews.

technology ios spam robocallers

Check who is sending you SMS spam in South Africa if they're registered with WASPA

2021-06-21 14:02:42

Danie van der Merwe

gadgeteer@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

The Wireless Application Service Providers’ Association of South Africa (WASPA) has launched an online platform that lets you type in the number an automated SMS message originated from and find out who sent it.

Called the Codes Project, the platform is intended to help consumers identify the sender of unwanted SMS messages.

WASPA managing executive Ilonka Badenhorst said that unsolicited direct marketing messages may create frustration for the recipient, especially if they are unable to identify the originator of the message.

See Check who is sending you SMS spam in South Africa

#technology #southafrica #spam #SMS #marketing

The Wireless Application Service Providers’ Association of South Africa has launched an online platform that lets you find out who sent an automated SMS message.

technology southafrica spam SMS