The rule you should know about annoying spam calls in South Africa
Despite significant regulatory changes made in recent years, telemarketers still constantly inundate office workers in South Africa with calls.
One of the biggest issues that South Africans should be aware of is that the Protection of Personal Information Act (Popia) doesn’t protect you from marketers who contact you telephonically unless you explicitly tell them to stop calling you, says Roy Bregman, director at Bregman Moodley Attorneys.
“Section 69 of Popia deals with processing your personal information without your consent. You must consent to direct marketing using any form of electronic communication. The section mentions automatic calling machines, a machine that can do automated calls without human intervention, facsimile machines, SMSs, or e-mails”.
He added that ‘electronic communication’ is something transmitted over electronic communications networks, stored in the network or the recipient’s equipment – such as a text, a voice, a sound, or an image.
“The section does not explicitly include phone marketing in its definition of unsolicited electronic communication. A telephone is not an electronic communications device. So, telemarketers may call you and ask you to consent to the call and the sales pitch. If you object, they may not contact you again.”
“If you want to bother, you can request the name of the telemarketers and note their numbers. You can complain to their company or the Information Regulator of South Africa if they don’t stop calling you after you told them telephonically.
“Should you object to further calls, any further processing of your information for this purpose is a breach of the provisions of Section 69 of Popia,” he said.
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