{"id":58987,"date":"2012-09-05T10:07:21","date_gmt":"2012-09-05T08:07:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=58987"},"modified":"2012-09-06T13:38:28","modified_gmt":"2012-09-06T11:38:28","slug":"spotting-a-spammer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/internet\/58987-spotting-a-spammer.html","title":{"rendered":"Spotting a spammer?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new social media initiative is aiming to cut down on South African spam e-mail by naming and shaming the offenders on Twitter<\/a> and Facebook<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A Twitter account<\/strong><\/a> and a Facebook page<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0were opened specifically to name and shame companies or individuals who harvest e-mail addresses and send spam to people without their permission.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe started our twitter account towards the end of May 2012 purely out of frustration by the amounts of spam, more specifically South African spam ending up in our various mailboxes,\u201d the founder said, without giving his name.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are a pedantry of geeks (still trying to find the proper collective noun for geeks) that decided to make use of our various IT skills to try and educate South Africa Marketers and deal with the spamming problem in South Africa.\u201d<\/p>\n

This initiative complement\u2019s the Internet Service Providers\u2019 Association (ISPA) Hall of Shame, which \u2018names and shames\u2019 spammers and e-mail address resellers in South Africa.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea did come from ISPA’s Hall of Shame, but we decided to take it one step further,\u201d the founder said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to give South Africans a way to report spam, and have somebody take up the fight on their behalf. The ISPA Hall of Shame is a great tool, but in reality only comes out once every quarter and it seems to be an honour to be listed on it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ZA<\/a>

ZA Spam Spotters<\/p><\/div>\n

ZA Spam Spotters is using Twitter as their primary social media platform and question those making use of e-mail marketing on why they not using a sanitized database of opt-in subscribers.<\/p>\n

\u201cCompanies are very brand aware these days, and any sort of a #brandfail and they respond and take action to resolve the problem,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt first we just wanted to gauge the responses and reaction on twitter, and finally decided this past week, that we should branch out onto Facebook\u201d.<\/p>\n

According to the founder ZA Spam Spotters has made contact with some ISPs and Mobile Network Providers, adding that most of them are positive.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to be able to build up a relationship with South African ISPs, Hosting Providers, Mobile Network Providers, and marketing companies, and hopefully come together and ensure a cleaner mailbox for all,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Related articles<\/strong><\/p>\n

SA email spam percentage revealed<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

South Africa\u2019s top e-mail spammers named and shamed<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Should you pay to stop SMS spam?<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

What you can do about SMS spam<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

ISPA to launch cyber security code in SA<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Spam fight in South Africa<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New initiative, called ZA Spam Spotters, aims to name and shame spammers on social media networks<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":27847,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[35,459,415],"class_list":["post-58987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-internet","tag-headline","tag-ispa","tag-spam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58987"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58987"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58987\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59051,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58987\/revisions\/59051"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}