Domains.co.za / Diamatrix CC Spamming

[Ben_D0ver]

Not impressed with recent communication sent out from Domains.co.za / Diamatrix CC

At first I thought it was a once off mail but after poking around and asking some of my clients who too received the same email, that its obvious that Domains.co.za / Diamtrix CC have been harvesting email addresses off of Uniforum's legacy system

Here with one of the emails which have been received

This is poor form considering that I have a reseller account with them and they have made contact with my clients, it is against ISPA's policies, and possibly a few other violatons


Take a load of this below…..







From: Garreth Dodds [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Thursday, July 3, 2014 11:28 AM
To: xxxxx@xxxx
Subject: Domains.co.za - Domain renewals



Hi XXXX



Please forgive me for popping you this email but I see that you are still using the old UniForum Legacy system to register or renew your .co.za domains at a cost of R75.00 per domain, I am not sure if you know but the same .co.za domains are cheaper via the new ZACR EPP system.



We at www.domains.co.za can offer you a .co.za registration or renewal via our white labelled reseller control panel for R50.00 including Vat, that R25 per domain cheaper. The control panel allows you to easily manage all your domains including international .com, .net, .biz etc in one central place. If you would prefer to automate the registration and renewal process you could make use of our full API and WHMCS integration.



Please see our website for more information: https://www.domains.co.za/domain-reseller or alternatively should you wish, I would be happy to give you a call and discuss



Looking forward to hearing from you



Regards,



Garreth Dodds



----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



DiaMatrix

Sales Department

Telephone: 011 640 9700 / 0861 100 698

Fax: 086 686 2444

[email protected]

www.domains.co.za / www.eshop.co.za / www.diamatrix.co.za



Follow us on Twitter: @diamatrixsa / @eshopsa



-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

[Ben_D0ver]

update : this seems to be a regular tactic of theirs
http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php/401113-Domains-co-za

 

[DrJohnZoidberg]

Good thing they're not sending to Canadians

Liability

What are the penalties for committing a violation under CASL?
If you commit a violation under any of sections 6 to 9 of CASL, then you may be required to pay an administrative monetary penalty (AMP). The maximum amount of an AMP, per violation, for an individual is $1 million, and for a business, it is $10 million. CASL sets out a list of factors considered in the determination the amount of the AMP.

http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/com500/faq500.htm

 

[Ben_D0ver]

I doubt ISPA will do anything - they are so lame

Pitty we arent in Canada now

More spam

Fri 7/4/2014 3:46 PM
From: Vanessa Losper <[email protected]>
To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>

Hi [email protected]



Please forgive me for popping you this email but I see that you are still using the old UniForum Legacy system to register or renew your .co.za domains at a cost of R75.00 per domain, I am not sure if you know but the same .co.za domains are cheaper via the new ZACR EPP system.



We at www.domains.co.za can offer you a .co.za registration or renewal via our white labelled reseller control panel for R50.00 including Vat, that R25 per domain cheaper. The control panel allows you to easily manage all your domains including international .com, .net, .biz etc in one central place. If you would prefer to automate the registration and renewal process you could make use of our full API and WHMCS integration.



Please see our website for more information: https://www.domains.co.za/domain-reseller or alternatively should you wish, I would be happy to give you a call and discuss



Looking forward to hearing from you



Regards,



Vanessa Losper



----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



DiaMatrix

Sales Department

Telephone: 011 640 9703 / 0861 100 698

Fax: 086 686 2444

[email protected]

www.domains.co.za / www.eshop.co.za / www.diamatrix.co.za



Follow us on Twitter: @diamatrixsa / @eshopsa



-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

[Ben_D0ver]

Anyone else received any of these or had their clients complain?

Some more spam from Diamatrix

Fri 7/4/2014 1:47 PM
From: Vanessa Losper <[email protected]>
To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>

Hi [email protected]


Please forgive me for popping you this email but I see that you are still using the old UniForum Legacy system to register or renew your .co.za domains at a cost of R75.00 per domain, I am not sure if you know but the same .co.za domains are cheaper via the new ZACR EPP system.



We at www.domains.co.za can offer you a .co.za registration or renewal via our white labelled reseller control panel for R50.00 including Vat, that R25 per domain cheaper. The control panel allows you to easily manage all your domains including international .com, .net, .biz etc in one central place. If you would prefer to automate the registration and renewal process you could make use of our full API and WHMCS integration.



Please see our website for more information: https://www.domains.co.za/domain-reseller or alternatively should you wish, I would be happy to give you a call and discuss



Looking forward to hearing from you



Regards,



Vanessa Losper



----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



DiaMatrix

Sales Department

Telephone: 011 640 9703 / 0861 100 698

Fax: 086 686 2444

[email protected]

www.domains.co.za / www.eshop.co.za / www.diamatrix.co.za



Follow us on Twitter: @diamatrixsa / @eshopsa



-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

[Ben_D0ver]

Intesting - If only we could hold them liable and accountable to their own policies

https://www.domains.co.za/legal/acceptable-usage-policy

The Customer shall be held liable for any and all costs incurred by the Provider as a result of the Customer's violation of this Policy. This is including, but not limited to, attorney fees and costs resulting from postmaster responses to complaints from, and the clean-up of, unsolicited commercial mailings and/or unauthorized bulk mailings and/or news server violations.
The Customer who violates this Policy agrees to pay Investigation fees of no more than R750 per hour that the Provider’s personnel must spend to investigate any violations

 

[ITCynic]

Thanks for the heads-up, I have added them to my mailserver blacklist

 

[Domains.co.za (Wayne)]

Hi isp-insider,

The discussion and brief with the Sales & Marketing departments was for them to search and locate small ISP's, Web Design Companies and alike, see if they had their domain still listed on Legacy and if they did, get in contact with them, ascertain how many legacy domains they had and offer them our Domain Reseller Solution as this would save them money each year on domains registrations and renewals. The brief was most certainly not to go and spam anyone or send out any form of generic or bulk email!

I have had a meeting with the Sales team this morning who have confirmed that they have not sent any form of bulk mailing. Each email that was sent was an individual email from a sales person from their Outlook.


I do agree that it is totally unacceptable that they have sent this email out without first contacting the respective company. That was not the brief or the intention from management and for this I do humbly apologize and can assure you that the issue has already been dealt with internally on our side.

Just a note on 2 points in your posts:

I see that you have altered the 2 email addresses in your posts to appear as though as they have been sent to spam listed address, I have personally gone through the Sales teams sent items to search for those emails and can confirm that neither of the above addresses that you listed were used.

This is poor form considering that I have a reseller account with them and they have made contact with my clients,

We see that there is no activity on your Reseller account and have no idea who your customers are so it seems unfair that that you accuse us of contacting a Resellers customers.


Edit

@isp-insider

Management would like to apologize to you for any inconvenience caused and would like to offer you a R500 credit on your Reseller account, please can you PM me so we can activate this for you.

 

[Ben_D0ver]

Based on your explanation of events and the outcome either one of two assumptions are correct.

1. You gave your staff a different set of instructions to what you have quoted in your response.
2. Your staff misinterpreted the instructions and mysteriously both thought that what you meant was to use Uniforum's whois system to gather email addresses associated with domains registered on the on the legacy system.

So the first question for you is which of the two points are true as the explanation and result do not add up.

Where and how were these email addresses obtained from?

If they were not sourced from Uniforum's whois system then I can only assume that your Organization was supplied with this information, either way you are required to disclose this information.

You are misinterpreting the definition of spam / unsolicited email by claiming that staff individually sent out each email. This explanation of how the e-mail was sent does not excuse the fact that your Organization has made contact with members of the public and advertised services without their consent, or prior contact.

The following lecture provided by the UCT may better explain where your organization has on many occasions failed to comply with legislation and the requirements set out with regards to direct marketing
http://etransactionslaw.uct.ac.za/lecture-5-advertising-marketing/

Again, I would have expected that your organization be aware of this considering that it is a member of ISPA (who from the offset frown upon spam and publish the names of spammers on their site), your organization owns a runs a bulk mail service and therefore most likely deal with complaints such as these this on a frequent basis, and as per your organization's terms and conditions condone spam / unsolicited email.

Lets get back to the facts, your organization sent out the same email to multiple recipients advertising its services. The intended recipients had not consented or agreed to receive such communication. The intended recipients had not made contact with your organizational prior to the date of each e-mail, and each e-mail fails to provide sufficient methods for the recipient to unsubscribe.

The contents of the email explicitly state the domain name(s) listed on the legacy system are being managed by the recipient, to which you have sourced their contact information. This method of information gathering is commonly referred to as harvesting.

This is not the first time that your organization has been identified on this forum for sending unsolicited email and to date no acceptable answer has been provided with regards to the methods of sourcing the recipients email address.

With regards to your comments about my account and the activity on it, if you have this information at hand, who gives you the right to disclose any account activity relating to my account in the public domain without my prior consent?.

Thanks for the offer of a credit, but I am not comfortable accepting any monies by your organization as there is no legitimate reason for such.

 

[Ben_D0ver]

Only a few months have passed and Domains.co.za are spamming again.

Hi isp-insider,

The discussion and brief with the Sales & Marketing departments was for them to search and locate small ISP's, Web Design Companies and alike, see if they had their domain still listed on Legacy and if they did, get in contact with them, ascertain how many legacy domains they had and offer them our Domain Reseller Solution as this would save them money each year on domains registrations and renewals. The brief was most certainly not to go and spam anyone or send out any form of generic or bulk email!

Generic emails are being sent to those who have not elected to receive any form of marketing from Domains.co.za. I wonder what the implications would be if MTN directly targeted Vodacom clients and told them to move over to their network to save money.

Based on the contents of your generic / bulk emails you are targeting Uniforum clients by using their whois system to identify Uniforum's client, obtain contact and billing information and use this information as part of your targeted spam campaign.

 

[Domains.co.za (Wayne)]

@isp-insider, please can you pm me the details of the email and who it was sent too so we can resolve on our side who sent it out.

Much appreciated

 

[aggressiveGrey]

To be honest, if myself or our CEO did not get this email, we wouldnt of joined Diamatrix/Domains.co.za

To me it was more informative than spam - considering the actual spam i recieve from day to day.

 

[¯\_(ツ)_/¯]

Insecure much? Have you tried providing your customers with better service & services so that you don't have to worry about them leaving you all the time? It's possibly a solution you should consider.

You miss the point and the underlying ethics. I'm with ISP Insider here. In a slightly different business I've made a deal with a competitor to take my business away from an upstream AFTER a similar campaign targeting my clients. It has nothing to do with insecurity and all with ethics.

Btw MTN do target vodacom customers, I have received a number of calls from Sales at MTN offering me packages to move over to them.

Ditto Cell C ...

I choose to stick with Vodacom as I believe they are a better provider. I don't see vodacom running around the internet acting all insecure about their business...

EDIT: in fact any time MTN do an ad on the radio or on tv and a vodacom customer watches / hears it, they are targeting them. I really don't see what the big deal is...

I left Vodacom due to excessive marketing from them while I was their client. But then so does Cell C and MTN. Pot-Kettle-Black ... yet they all themselves hold up anti-spam terms?

On another note, quite a few Diamatrix clients have pooped (oops, but lets leave it like that, also appropriate) into my spam box. Monitoring ...

Rule #1: Anybody spamming me goes on to the do not support ever list, rather use it as a bargaining chip to get a better price from their competitors.

 

[Thor]

Based on your explanation of events and the outcome either one of two assumptions are correct.

1. You gave your staff a different set of instructions to what you have quoted in your response.
2. Your staff misinterpreted the instructions and mysteriously both thought that what you meant was to use Uniforum's whois system to gather email addresses associated with domains registered on the on the legacy system.

So the first question for you is which of the two points are true as the explanation and result do not add up.

Where and how were these email addresses obtained from?

If they were not sourced from Uniforum's whois system then I can only assume that your Organization was supplied with this information, either way you are required to disclose this information.

You are misinterpreting the definition of spam / unsolicited email by claiming that staff individually sent out each email. This explanation of how the e-mail was sent does not excuse the fact that your Organization has made contact with members of the public and advertised services without their consent, or prior contact.

The following lecture provided by the UCT may better explain where your organization has on many occasions failed to comply with legislation and the requirements set out with regards to direct marketing
http://etransactionslaw.uct.ac.za/lecture-5-advertising-marketing/

Again, I would have expected that your organization be aware of this considering that it is a member of ISPA (who from the offset frown upon spam and publish the names of spammers on their site), your organization owns a runs a bulk mail service and therefore most likely deal with complaints such as these this on a frequent basis, and as per your organization's terms and conditions condone spam / unsolicited email.

Lets get back to the facts, your organization sent out the same email to multiple recipients advertising its services. The intended recipients had not consented or agreed to receive such communication. The intended recipients had not made contact with your organizational prior to the date of each e-mail, and each e-mail fails to provide sufficient methods for the recipient to unsubscribe.

The contents of the email explicitly state the domain name(s) listed on the legacy system are being managed by the recipient, to which you have sourced their contact information. This method of information gathering is commonly referred to as harvesting.

This is not the first time that your organization has been identified on this forum for sending unsolicited email and to date no acceptable answer has been provided with regards to the methods of sourcing the recipients email address.

With regards to your comments about my account and the activity on it, if you have this information at hand, who gives you the right to disclose any account activity relating to my account in the public domain without my prior consent?.

Thanks for the offer of a credit, but I am not comfortable accepting any monies by your organization as there is no legitimate reason for such.

I would also like to get this messages answered point by point to clear things up.

Ethics is everything to me.

Don't go all OpenWeb on us.

 

[Ipwn 4]

yeah received the spam also, not a big deal though as it will save you money if you didn't know about EPP changes etc.
Checked my mail history, only once received a mail from them so not really spam.

Anyway, not really something to get excited about. Penis enlargers or chinese electronics tend to upset me a whole lot more.