Home-grown spam is hitting our mailboxes, but despite rapid action by local Internet service providers, it seems that nothing is going to stand in its way.
Earlier this month, Patrick Ancillotti, XSInet systems administrator, noticed a sudden surge in traffic on the company`s network. "Someone was attempting to mass spam our network," he says. "They sent through around 120 000 mails in under six hours. Of those, 3 000 got through filtering rules but were deleted by the mail server. Only around 800 were actually downloaded."
Ancillotti followed up with M-Web, where the mails were originating, and determined that the originating e-mail address was not registered. "What they`re doing as far as I understand it is registering an account on online registration, and then sending mass spam from an account that doesn`t exist," he says.
The mails are from a company called Faxnet, and offer potential customers a free South African fax to e-mail service. A Web site that clients can visit for more information is listed, as well as an address that recipients can use to unsubscribe if they don`t want to receive any further mail.
It is this loophole that Ancillotti says the spammer used to justify his actions when XSInet approached him. "He says that because he has provided this option, what he is doing is not illegal."
Hetzner Africa, the company hosting Faxnet`s Web site, was approached by a number of irate recipients, and the company immediately contacted its client.
"We couldn`t do anything about the e-mail as it wasn`t being generated from our side," says Philip Manning, client services manager of Hetzner Africa. "We suspended the site and contacted him to inform him of the legislation regarding spam, as well as of our own policy, which states that mass spamming is not permitted. During the course of the next week, he visited a legal firm to find out what his options were, and his Web site is now hosted elsewhere."
Faxnet, which could not be reached for comment, is still sending out mails, but it refers to a new Web site that is not hosted by Hetzner. "His original site is now live again, but if it is referred to in any spam, we would hear about it very quickly and would again take steps consistent with our policy," says Manning.
According to a lawyer, while the Electronic Communications and Transactions (ECT) Act clearly lays out a definition of spam, it offers no recourse for those who receive it.
"The ECT Act is currently the only Act which addresses spam, and the only remedy offered is that if the sender does not comply with the recipient`s unsubscribe request, then a complaint can be registered with the consumer affairs committee, which is a pretty toothless organisation," says IT lawyer, Ryk Meiring.
But there is still hope, as Meiring points out. "The law commission has just released a new issue; a green paper investigating what privacy legislation is required in SA," he says. "This should address the ECT Act and spamming in particular. Anyone who wants to comment should do so by early December."
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