A South African internet service provider has been fined R10 000 for sending spam emails to private individuals. Internet Services and Technologies (iSAT), a South African internet company with a reasonable share of the country’s growing internet market, was also fined an additional R50 000, suspended on the condition that it ceases to send such e-mails to private individuals after the ruling is handed down.
“It is particularly worrying,” the Internet Service Providers’ Association (Ispa) said in its ruling on Monday, “… that an ISP itself appears not to appreciate the unacceptable nature of this behaviour.”
The company made no attempt to deny the charges made against them, and during the Ispa ruling admitted that it had distributed numerous marketing emails to private individuals, with unsubscribing the only means of stopping them.
“It gives no explanation as to where it obtained the addresses that it is using or indication that these e-mails are not ‘unsolicited’,” Ispa recently remarked. The medium sized company has not yet met media requests for comment on the ruling which was handed down this month.
The case against Internet Services and Technologies was made by Frank Coetzee, a self-employed individual, after he decided he had enough of the constant barrage of emails he had received from the internet service provider. After filing a complaint on May 22 with Ispa, he told the media that he had ‘dozens’ of email accounts and was convinced that at least three of those accounts were definitely on a spam list.