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Compulsory advertising above this line. Please just ignore it. And I'm sorry about the popups.
On this page:
According to Lance Michalson, "There are different, but related forms of privacy. These include: bodily privacy (which is concerned with protecting yourself against invasive procedures such as drug testing and cavity searches), privacy of communications (which covers the security and privacy of mail, e-mail, telephones and other forms of communication), territorial privacy (which concerns the setting of limits on intrusion into the domestic environment and workplace and includes searches, video surveillance and ID checks) and information / data privacy (which deals with rules governing the collection and handling of personal data such as financial information and medical information)."
Please read his detailed and highly informative 
"Guide to Data Privacy Law in South Africa" and the "Guide to Monitoring e-Communications in SA". You can also download them from the www.michalson.com web site, along with other related information. There is a newsletter too. Good stuff!
The Department of Communication is in the process of setting up a monitoring mechanism whereby emails and other electronic communications and network traffic may be
legally intercepted: The Lawful Interception Act. From 702 news:
Mixed reaction to legislation relating to communication interception 9/13/2004 6:18:14 PM
There's been mixed reaction to news that wide-ranging legislation relating to the interception of communication is expected to come into force soon. An Act specifying when authorities can intercept emails, cellphone and fixed line calls through a main centre was gazetted last year. But it's been held off until now while regulations were drafted. Internet service providers and phone operators are preparing to install equipment and software to intercept their networks and send the traffic to one centre. In most cases the courts will have to approve the interception of a suspected criminal. But the Act allows policemen to initially bypass the court when someone can be saved from bodily harm or death. Some callers to Talk Radio 702 are in favour of the legislation - but others say the law runs roughshod over constitutional rights to privacy.
PowerPoint presentatation made at iWeek that gives a bit more detail. It was made by Edmund Baloyi and Jayesh Nana.
But Here is a warning,
made in the USA by someone who has had personal experience of harassment from
a duly-elected government:
“If our government ever goes bad, as sometimes happens in a democracy... Sometimes in a democracy bad people can be elected, and if democracy is allowed to function normally, these people can be taken out of power by the next election. But if a future government inherits a technology infrastructure that's optimized for surveillance, where they can watch the movements of their political opposition, they can see every bit of travel they could do, every financial transaction, every communication, every bit of email, every phone call, everything could be filtered and scanned and automatically recognized by voice recognition technology and transcribed.
Philip R. Zimmermann is the creator of Pretty Good Privacy, an email encryption software package. Originally designed as a human rights tool, PGP was published for free on the Internet in 1991. This made Zimmermann the target of a three-year criminal investigation, because the [US] government held that US export restrictions for cryptographic software were violated when PGP spread worldwide. Despite the lack of funding, the lack of any paid staff, the lack of a company to stand behind it, and despite [US] government persecution, PGP nonetheless became the most widely used email encryption software in the world. After the [US] government dropped its case in early 1996, Zimmermann founded PGP Inc.
The SA government have obviously never heard of Pretty Good Privacy (or PGP for short). It allows you to encrypt files and emails with 2048bit encryption. Considering that online banking only uses 128bit encryption, it's pretty good and pretty private. Here's how it works:
Here is mineIf you use encrypted messages and the cops want to intercept them, they'll need a search warrant to have a look at the messages that you send. My biggest worry is this: How do we know that the eavesdropping equipment is secure and can't be used by hackers? The answer is that we don't. In any case, you wouldn't put your credit card details in an email, because there are plenty of other illegal ways of reading your mail. So don't assume that any of your emails are private. They are as private as a postcard.
There is one other problem, highlighted
in the interview: as many people as possible should use PGP. The illustration given is the difference between sending
a postcard and sending a letter in an envelope. If everyone only sent postcards, the letter looks conspicous, and
"must be hiding something". Similarly with encrypted emails. Fortunately there is a freeware version of PGP, as well
as an open source version (GNUPG). The licensed version costs US$59, which is hardly expensive.
At also has a brilliant facility called PGPdisk, which allows you to create an encrypted volume on your hard drive. I keep all my confidential stuff there, in case my laptop gets stolen. It works like another disk drive, and is as fast as a flash drive, even on my slow 266MHz Pentium II laptop. If anyone steals my laptop, that's one set of data I know they can't read.
Another way to send encryped data is to use WinZip 9.0 SR-1 (or higher). The ZIP file format has always had password protection, but there
are Password Recovery programs that can be
used to guess the password pretty quickly, especially if the password is short. By comparison, AES
encryption is a secure industry
standard encryption method. You need a "password/passphrase" which should be a decent
length (more than 8 characters!). Only by knowing the phrase can the file be decrypted. 128-bit or 256-bit
security is available, at a cost of only US$29, which is pretty good. But there's a catch: how do you tell the
recipient what the password is without writing it in the email? That's where PGP comes in.
Fair Lady magazine had a most informative article about the more sinister side of Identity theft in their
July 2004 issue. It's not only bogus marriages that are the problem, but the implications of having your name
changed without your permission.
Criminals are using stolen identities to commit a range of vicious deeds. What's more, your documents don't have to be stolen for you to become a victim of the world's fastest-growing new crime: Identity theft. And South Africa isn't winning the war.Read the full story here. Fair Lady's editorial staff are to be thanked for making this article available online. It is well worth reading. Another story on Fake Marriages can be found at the Carte Blanche web site.
When Sisanda Futa, 25, tells people she is married to a Japanese man she has never met, the first thing they usually do is giggle. Until they realise the implications for Sisanda.
Sisanda is an attractive, fun-loving metallurgy and engineering graduate, who grew up in the Transkei and moved to Cape Town to take up a promising position with an oil company. But she's become stressed and depressed since she discovered her identity was stolen and used to provide a foreign immigrant with a local wife to legalise his residency permit.
Sisanda's daily life has become a living nightmare. Now that she is Sisanda Hong on South Africa's identity records, she can't open or operate any bank, store or telephone account unless she uses her new name. She can't apply for electricity in her own name, or sign a lease for her own home. She can't marry, and she can't vote unless she's prepared to do so as Sisanda Hong. And she can't change her surname back to Futa.
What at first seemed like an annoying one-off case of fraud has proved to be an irreversible transaction with enduring consequences.
"At first I was shocked and irritated, but this has become deeply stressful. I have reported it to the police and have tried several times to get the Department of Home Affairs to resolve this, but they refuse to believe I did not marry this person I have never even met," Sisanda says, struggling to hold back tears.
The only solution police and Home Affairs officials have come up with so far is for her to divorce Jianjing Hong - a step Sisanda refuses to take. "I don't want to be a divorcee. I'm not one now and I don't intend to be one. I can prove I wasn't in Pretoria at the time they say I got married, but they aren't interested. They say, 'This is where you got married, this is where you signed and this is the priest.' I want to scream out of desperation," she says.
Sisanda is not prepared to use her new identity either, as she fears this would be tantamount to conceding she did in fact go along with a wedding to a stranger and could, as a result, weaken her case to get back her own name.
“You have zero privacy
anyway. Get over it.”
- Scott McNealy, Sun Microsystems CEO. Quoted in an article in
SA Computer Magazine.
Consider the following article from
ITWeb:
Many telephone subscribers have said they are considering taking legal action against EasyInfo, because its new EasyPeople directory includes the names, numbers and addresses of people with unlisted numbers.
However, Ryk Meiring, Internet law attorney at Spoor & Fisher in Pretoria, points out that an unlisted phone number entails an agreement only between the telecoms provider (such as Telkom™) and the subscriber. No other company is bound by this agreement.
In addition, says Meiring, many people happily complete competition entry forms and race entry forms, giving detailed personal information without checking that the forms bear warranties protecting the information. The company collecting these forms is therefore entitled to use this information any way it wants to, including publishing it on the Internet.
"Privacy is in general protected in terms of our Constitution, though," says Meiring. "Anyone wanting to take legal action would probably have to take action in terms of common law, perhaps as a class action suit, and would also have to prove that damages occurred as a direct result of their personal details being published online."
Another complicating issue is that of who to sue. Says Meiring: "If EasyInfo believed they acquired the data legitimately, they could not really be held liable." People would therefore have to find the originators of the database and prove wrongdoing on their part.
"There are two forms of infringement of our common law rights to privacy in SA law, that of unauthorised invasion of privacy by intrusion, and the other the violation of the right to privacy by wrongful disclosure. In pursuing legal action, the person alleging the infringement must first prove that a legally recognised interest has been infringed. The wrongfulness test for an actual event of infringement of privacy in our law is the boni-mores (good morals or legal convictions of the community) general test, which requires the element of intent to establish wrongfulness," says Meiring.
We believe that organisations that publish information about you without your permission are violating your basic
right to privacy. Check out the following web sites:
Telkom™ Directory Services Residential Listings: Click on
"The PhoneBook Residential Listings" to check if your name is there.
The listings are not alphabetical, so check carefully. If you phone their customer care number 0800 005 667 don’t expect
them to understand what you mean by having your name removed, because they aren’t aware that they publish anything on
the internet. So send an e-mail to The Customer Care Manager and
tell them that when you ticked the Telkom™ (NYSE:TKG) application form to have your name published in the White Pages phone book
you did not give them permission to publish your name, phone number and residential address on the internet. Then click
on the "Contact Us" icon, and the "Click For Amendments"
icon. Put in your details and put a comment in the "Comments" section telling them to remove your name
immediately.
Easy Info People Finder: These people shamelessly publish
the unlisted telephone numbers and addresses of radio personalities and other interesting people. Unfortunately you
have to send an e-mail to Alan Lipschitz: Managing Director of Interface to have your name removed. His e-mail address is
alan@interface.co.za and you can telephone his
office 011-880-8111 or send him a fax.
This may no longer be necessary, because Telkom™ (NYSE:TKG) and EasyInfo have reached an
agreement to close down the service.
Personal Pages: This was published by the unlisted
Umfowize Publishers, whose identity is hidden by the lawyers who registered the domain name. You can write to them to have your name removed. They have no
contact details on the site, and no privacy policy either, other than they will publish your personal details without
your permission. Isn’t life peachy? I suggest you use a bogus e-mail address when they ask you to register. Who knows
what SPAM they could be tempted to send you. They also passed this information on to EasyInfo, and they shared servers
with EasyInfo.
Imagine this: you are sitting in court waiting to testify as a witness, when one of the
lawyers presents your phone records to the court. Every number you dialled in the last 3 months!
To make matters worse, these are the records of Noseweek Editor, Martin Welz.
Nice one, Vodacom! Especially as you did so without letting your client know, and in a civil
matter where no crime has been committed. At least Telkom had the good sense to black out
the irrelevant numbers, but not Vodacom! And this from the same network operator that has an
"eavesdropping" facility where people can listen in on phone calls.
And thanks for respecting the independence of the press.
On Wednesday, when Welz arrived in Pretoria, he did not know the mining boss had subpoenaed his private phone records. It was only while sitting in the public gallery waiting to be called as a witness that Welz realised his records had been presented.I'm sure we have not heard the last of this. Firstly, how could the lawyers demand evidence in this way when they are fully aware of the privacy of these records? And how could the phone companies be so stupid as to give over the records without checking whether they are supposed to or not? I guess journalists are going to have to get those R10 airtime vouchers and use a different SIM card every week or so. Or they could use MTN. They claim to have a more secure network. I just hope they also have a more wide awake records department.
The magazine editor, who is a lawyer and is representing himself, immediately interrupted the court proceedings and objected, saying his constitutional right to privacy had been violated.
Speaking to the Sunday Times on Friday, Welz said he was particularly concerned that numbers not relevant to the case had not been blacked out in the records supplied to court by the cellphone networks.
As a result of Welz’s objection, the court ruled it would keep the records in its possession until he presented a formal application on December 3 to have the evidence thrown out.
“I was horrified by the tactics employed by Davison’s lawyers,” said Welz. “You never imagine that this could happen in a civilised court.
“You don’t expect to arrive and find that in a civil case someone has just gaily sent a piece of court paper to Vodacom and Telkom and there they have every call that a newspaper editor has made over a three-month period.”
Noseweek is South Africa's only investigative magazine and features irreverent, independent,
inside information about business, the professions, politics and society in South Africa.
Published monthly it's essential reading for anybody interested in what's going on in the
rainbow nation.
Protect the right to privacy
The right to privacy is an important conquest for this constitutional democracy, and for good reason. Under apartheid, the state violated citizens’ privacy with impunity.
Our constitution enshrines protection against violation of “softer” rights, including human dignity, on the basis that they can so easily be abused. The right to privacy protects people against government or private agencies snooping around at whim in their private lives — from their phone calls to their love letters, from the books they borrow at the library to the kind of car insurance they carry.
The release of Noseweek editor Martin Welz’s cellphone records without his knowledge appears to be a dangerous violation of this right.
Clause 14 of the Bill of Rights states: “Everyone has the right to privacy, which includes the right not to have their person or home searched; their property searched; their possessions seized; or the privacy of their communications infringed.”
Welz has been subpoenaed to give evidence in the divorce proceedings of Anglo American director Barry Davison, who is trying to limit the R7 million his ex-wife Sally is receiving of his estimated R100 million fortune after an article appeared in Noseweek about their divorce.
As ThisDay reported yesterday, Welz discovered that his records had been released in court only when it was revealed that Vodacom had done so without his permission.
Equally worrying is that the entire call record was released, not just that pertaining to the matter being heard. Telkom released Welz’s records but blanked out the numbers that were not relevant to this.
Ultimately, neither is acceptable.
While Vodacom has defended itself by saying it was cooperating with police, Welz says these records were released to an AngloPlat secretary and not at an attorney’s request.
But even if the request had come at a more formal level, there is a qualitative difference between violent or life-threatening crimes and divorce proceedings. An attempt to “limit” a protection enshrined in the Bill of Rights, such as the right to privacy, must clearly be based on very weighty matters indeed.
In his company’s defence, a Vodacom spokesperson remarked that “if someone is committing a criminal offence, it is unrealistic for us to phone him and warn him that the police are after him”.
That may be true, but Welz is not accused of committing a criminal offence.
As Welz has said “at the very least, they (Vodacom) could have informed me as their client”.
Welz is an investigative journalist, and this development should indeed be worrying to all journalists in South Africa.
The right to privacy is clearly one that a great majority of South Africans cherish. It should not be tossed away by anyone, whether a government or private agency.
Editorial from ThisDay newspaper, 07/10/2004 page 10.
There are organisations who annoy us and interefere with our private time by doing telephone canvassing. When they phone, do the following:
The worst offenders are those people who phone to tell you that you’ve won a competition, or that they are doing market research when in fact all they are doing is trying to sell you something. Usually it’s timeshare or timeshare points. An example of this is Quality Vacation Club, who used a marketing company called "Fin Dynamic" that isn’t listed in the phone book. The caller told my wife that she had won a competition and that she needed to attend the prizegiving. They were somewhat cagegy about what she had won, but insisted she come to the prizegiving. She asked if it was timeshare, and was told no. What they failed to mention was that they were selling something worse than timeshare called "timeshare points". This is not subject to the same legislative protection as normal timeshare, and involves no fixed assets, so it is much more risky.
If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Get all promises in writing before you attend the "prizegiving". In spite of the fact that I made it perfectly clear that they should not phone again, they phoned again**. My question is quite simple: can anyone trust a company that uses unethical means to get your details and can’t manage the information adequately? Why would you want to pay them money?
I have received an email from a QVC customer who paid R 36 000 for his points, and planned to use them for an overseas holiday as part of his honeymoon. Guess what? After getting no response from his phone calls for several months, he’s had to book his honeymoon through a travel agent, and pay for it the hard way.
From: Grant Powell
Sent: 07 January 2004 12:15 PM
Good day
Last year (14/08/2003) I was invited by QVC (Quality Vacation Club) to attend a presentation on holiday packages they were offering. UNFORTUNATELY I purchased a package!
Everything is very professional while you are there but as soon as they have your money in their account you are simply forgotten. The reason I purchased the package is that I am getting married in April’04, and this was going to be my honeymoon option. I plan to travel abroad for my honeymoon and I was assured that this would be possible as QVC, linked to RCI, has over 3000 resorts worldwide. I was assured by the Investment Consultant, Scott Ballantine, that there was more than enough time to find suitable accommodation overseas. I started enquiring about accommodation in September 2003 and this is where the trouble started as I am still waiting.
Firstly, I have to phone the reservations office to enquire, which is situated in Sedgefield – I live in Gauteng. I was told that after 1 phone call to them, they would keep me updated. Not true! I have to keep phoning back at my expense!
Secondly, I was given documentation pertaining to 2002, I purchased this package in 2003 and it is now 2004. I was also promised a CD.
Thirdly, I was contacted by a representative from RCI in Johannesburg named Ivan (who has been surprisingly helpful) to tell me that there was a resort that fitted the location and description I had given to the QVC personnel available. I am looking for a beach holiday/honeymoon somewhere in Europe on the Mediterranean (anywhere from the Canary Islands to Greece). Ivan had found me a resort in the mountains in Lebanon! Great attention to detail by the QVC staff!
When I originally purchased this package, Scott Ballantine, gave me his business card and said to please contact him if I have any problems, well I would not be writing to you, if I was able to contact him. Messages (and there have been numerous) have been left for him at his office and on his cell phone – NO REPLY! I managed to get hold of him once on his cell and he replied to me on an email – Still no success. As you will see on the attached email, Scott Ballantine promised to look into the above concerns – the email was sent in October’03 – STILL NOTHING!
This holiday package cost me approximately R36 000 (not counting the annual fees) and I am now left with no other option but to organise my honeymoon through a travel agent (they will at least return your calls/emails). So much for "RCI points" and using them to travel overseas!
My QVC membership number is xxxxx and my international RCI number is QVCxxxxx
Regards
Grant Powell
** Guess what? Fin-Dynamic called us again. I phoned their number 011-805-9509/11, which incidentally is not in the phone book, and spoke to the supervisor on duty, and asked him what I have to do to ensure they don’t call again. They took down my details and promised it wouln’t hqppen again. Personally I don’t believe it, since they have lied to us in the past and I hove no reason to believe these con artists won’t lie again in the future.
Here's another one: The Alternative Group (TAG), 15 Richards Drive, Midrand. Phone 072-248-2366. They like to phone residential numbers on a public holiday. I didn't even ask what they were selling. And my name isn't Danie, and my home number is unlisted. So whatever they are selling I don't want to know.
This SMS technology is about to get completely out of hand. Consider this: in South Africa there are 6 cell phone prefixes: 082, 083, 084, 072, 073 074. Each number has 7 digits, which makes for 60 000 000 possible numbers. By doing a bit of research you can determine that AutoPage for example has numbers beginning 082-87, so immediately you can reduce the number of potential phones to 100 000. At 10c per SMS, it only costs R 10 000 to send an SMS to every Autopage subscriber. So you can automatically generate cell phone numbers and send them SMS messages. What’s more you don’t pay for the wrong numbers! What was impractical with voice calls is now easy with text messages.
Think about this for a second. For the price of a small advert in a daily newspaper you can reach 100 000 subscribers individually. And there is nothing to stop you doing it. Today I got my first such message, from subscriber number +278200701101462 which read: "Are you paying too much for cellphone insurance? Insure through Class-A from as low as Rxx. Phone us now on 086 034 6250 or send us a ‘pse call me’ for a quote."
I tracked this operation down: "Class-A" shares offices with "Rentcorp Africa" and "Setsel" in Momentum Business Park, 563 Main Road, Midrand. Phone 011-805-2702. Ask for Shean Pieterse or call him on 072-473-8866 to get your number put on their "don’t call" list. Since my insurance costs 43% more that their lower rate, I’m sure they are getting some kind of response. The question is, how long will it take before everyone tries their direct selling in this way? It’s cheap enough, so any fly-by-night operation can do it.
Here’s another example. To quote an email I received on 26/1/2004:
To: Platinum CSB Pty Ltd, PO Box X12, Kuils River, 7579
For the urgent attention of Francois Olivier and Corlia Olivier
During the past few days I have received the following unsolicited SMS messages from your company from telephone number +27 83 641-4149:
"You can now buy airtime anytime, anywhere, via SMS or telephone. What’s more you have been pre-approved for credit facilities! Phone 0867 xxx xxx to register."
I have called you office on three occasions, informing you not to send me any more messages, and to remove my details from you list. You have ignored my requests, and this morning I have received yet another unsolicited SMS.
Your company is infringing on my common law rights to privacy under South African law, by the unauthorised invasion of privacy by intrusion. The Constitution of South Africa makes provision for the right to privacy of my contact details: "Everyone has the right to privacy, which includes the right not to have ... the privacy of their communications infringed."
Even the GSM Association has identified
SMS spam as a pest. Their press release entitled “GSM Association sets its sights on ‘spamming’ globally”
recognises that SMS and MMS (photos and longer messages) both pose spam risks. Once MMS phones are more widespread, you can bet
that spammers will start sending picture ads and pornographic spam to your phone unless someone puts a stop
to it.
But it gets worse: once you’ve tried all those "generated" numbers, you know which ones worked and which didn’t. Add to that the ones that responded and the one that complained. Now you can recoup the cost of sending the SMSes by selling this information to someone else. Isn’t technology wonderful?
When you get an account with some department stores they think they are entitled to send you SMS messages as well. One quick but firm phone call to Truworths stopped that nonsense: I just told them that if I got another SMS from them I would stop buying goods from their stores.
Then there are organisations like DirectSMS.com who buy lists of names and phone numbers from "Mail List Incorporated" (whoever they are) and other sources, and then use them to send SMS advertising to your cell phone. To have your name removed, phone them on 011-340-6500/2 and ask for Howard, or send him an e-mail at mail@directsms.com to have your phone number removed. Their fax number is 011-880-6141
It seems like the cell phone companies are sick of their networks being abused and having to take the blame for it. So they have launched www.smscode.co.za where you can report the sender of unsolicited SMS messages. So before you delete those unwanted messages, head on over to www.smscode.co.za and fill in the details. You'll be doing everyone a favour. Brilliant! Well done! Thank you!
Fortunately there are organisation that try to help you. If you have been getting junk mail in your mailbox,
please contact the Marketing Federation of South Africa.
There is a form you can fill in to get your name taken off a zillion mailing lists, including the notorious "GCD"
which is used by banks, insurance companies and other irritating organisations to sell you rubbish.
There is an
on-line form you can fill in, or 
download and fax it to 011-832-3512,
which puts you on the SA Mail Preference Service list of people who don’t want to be
bothered with junk mail at home. They also have a code of practice for members, which includes a Data Privacy Code as well as Spam Guidelines
If you get contacted by anyone selling Timeshare, contact the Timeshare Institute at tisa@tisa.co.za or visit their web site at www.tisa.co.za
It seems that The Star has uncovered a scheme by the Post Office and others to collaborate in sharing and
verifying customer information. With your and my permission? I think not!
Of course, the Post Office is a leading member of the MFSA, so they would obviously have to subscribe to the
MFSA Data Privacy Code and not divulge your postal address to anyone without your permission.
I wonder whether the MFSA code of conduct applies to all those "flyers" and junk that lands up in our post boxes?
The following privacy waiver clause is to be inserted into all intermediary contract application forms:
"I accept that I am curtailing my right to privacy, but to facilitate the assessment of this or any other application for an intermediary appointment/contract I irrevocably authorise (ABC Life) to obtain from any person or institution, whom I hereby so authorise and request to give any information which (ABC Life) deems necessary and to share with others that information and any information contained in this application or in the Intermediary Register either directly or through the database operated by or for insurers as a group."
There is also a code of conduct relating to the personal particulars of policyholders, and the people who access
the records and computer systems where this information is stored:
6. The Right of privacy /Access by authorised users
6.1 Sound business practice dictates that information relevant to a prospective intermediary must be obtained prior to appointment. According to South African law all persons have a right to privacy. However this right is not absolute and in certain circumstances information may be disclosed without a person's consent where the parties concerned have a legitimate interest therein. Authorised users must therefore register all existing intermediaries on the Intermediary Register even where no consent has been obtained, but must attempt to obtain consent where possible, as per clause 6.2 below.
6.2 A person may consent to the disclosure of private information and may waive the right to privacy. It is obligatory that all authorised users obtain a signed consent and waiver of privacy prior to the appointment of an intermediary. The prescribed format is set out in Annexure B.
7. Security of Information
7.1 Information in the Register shall be used by authorised users for bona fide employment purposes and in particular shall not be made available to any other person or entity. The Financial Services Exchange will be provided with information as to whether the intermediary is registered on the Intermediary Register.
7.2 Authorised users shall be responsible for ensuring that any information obtained from the Register is kept private and confidential.
7.3 All systems access to the register is to be limited to authorised officials as determined by authorised users. The authorised user is obligated to notify the Executive Director of the LOA of their designated authorised officials before the commencement of the Code, and of any subsequent changes.
All of this is supposed to leave policyholders with the warm fuzzy feeling that even though they have filled out
all kinds of forms with past medical history, personal particulars, banking details and so on, that the information
is kept safe and secure, and all the people who access it are totally honest and trustworthy.
In the main this is true, simply because if the information is leaked it would ruin the reputation of an insurance
firm overnight, or at least expose it to serious litigation by aggrieved policyholders.
The LOA made several submissions to the SA Law Commission relating to Privacy.
But one area NOT covered by the LOA code of conduct is the question of direct marketing, either by email or post. This usually affects NON-policyholders, but some companies rely on the apathy of the public or the inconvenience factor. They're in it for the money. The better ones have an "opt-out" facility.
Personally I find the idea of companies who compile lists of names and addresses of members of the public quite
repulsive. Have these people no shame??![Disapprove [V]](ico/icon_smile_disapprove.gif "Disapprove [V]"){kind=icon}
Their mission in life is to clog your mailbox with junk. The Post Office
gives them special deals on bulk mailing to make it easier. And of course if
you ask them how they got your details they won't tell you. Why? Because if they did they may just have a lawsuit
on their hands. I mean, if you went around sniffing in people's rubbish bins would you admit it? If you intercepted
email traffic or hacked into mail servers to find names and email addresses, would you own up? Maybe they just
hijack postal delivery trucks or bribe post office officials.![Evil [):]](ico/icon_smile_evil.gif "Evil [):]"){kind=icon}
You never know. And they won't say. Their silence speaks volumes.
Of course, some of them argue that their services make these mailing lists more efficient and effective. "Intimate Value set to save SA businesses millions in data accuracy" is one such assertion. Then there is the question of whether or not the Post Office is involved with these companies. The Star says yes, they say no. See above.
One thing that we know for sure is that some insurance companies use the services of direct mail companies to sell their products. Of course they see nothing wrong with it, and are happy to announce these deals on their SENS statements. Here is a statement directly from the Metropolitan legal department:
“Metropolitan Life Ltd gets data from Directfin (DFS) and such data is used only to sell authorised Metropolitan products to that data base. DFS gets data from Blackwood Mall which gets data from a variety of sources and it is the latter's core business to obtain data. The information that Metropolitan receives is not passed on to others and the utmost of care is taken to ensure this.This is all well and good except the marketing junk they sent me, on a Metropolitan letterhead, had no such removal option. It turns out the removal option is on their Policy Application form. The danger that these companies face is that the data they get from companies like Blackwood Mall is faulty or just nonsense. How could they send a letter to my wife under her maiden name when we have been married for 3 years and only living at the address used for 1 year? Shows the quality of their data!
“The mailshot has an option for prospective clients to indicate whether or not they would like to receive any insurance offers in the future. Should you receive such a mailshot in the future kindly indicate that you do not want to receive any insurance offers.”
Eddie Arpesella, GM of Metropolitain Direct, called me and explained that they got a list from Blackwood Mall, and then removed all the names of existing policyholders, plus all the names they keep of people who don't want to receive mail from them. They then selected addresses from the remaining list to send a bulk mailing. He confirmed that Metropolitan Direct is a member of the Marketing Federation of South Africa, but was unaware that they do not download the South African Mailing Preference Service list.
Reputable companies should not stoop to the level of junk mail. Why? Because it shows complete contempt for the
privacy of the person being "targeted" without their permission. And there is a real possibility that in the process
of filtering out the policyholder details from those of non-policyholders, that the identity of the policyholders
will be revealed. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that if I give a list of 5000 names to the insurance
company and they tell me that I should only send letters to the following 2500 names, then the other 2500 names are
already clients. So unless there are fairly elaborate precautions taken, the information is indirectly disclosed.
I guess it's too much to ask them to not buy mailing lists altogether.
Sometimes big companies sponsor events held by sports bodies, and in return expect to be able to send mail shots to all the members of the sports body. If the sports administrators aren't too sharp they end up disclosing their entire membership database to the sponsoring company. I wrote a membership database for a sports organisation where this happened. The sponsorship only lasted a year. I signed an NDA so I can't say who it was.
There is unwanted mail, and SPAM. Spammers usually disguise themselves, but there are some people who think that email is OK for marketing and are quite open about it. What they don’t notice is that they are violating the Acceptable Use Policy of their service providers. Check out the policies of M-Web (See 7.1) and World Online (See 13 j).
Unsolicited commercial email is illegal in South Africa, in terms of Section 45(4) of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act, no 25 of 2002.
Now you can send the following 
message to spammers:
In terms of section 45(4) of this Act, this message serves as notification that I do not wish to receive any further communications from you. Failure to comply with this request constitutes a criminal offense in terms of the ECT Act. Additionally, I hereby request that you immediately disclose where you obtained my contact details, as per section 45(1) of the ECT Act. Failure to respond to this request also constitutes a criminal offense. [Optional paragraph: I note that your original message did not provide me with an option to cancel my subscription to your mailing list, as required by section 45(1) of the Act. This means that you may already have committed an offense in terms of section 45(3) of the Act, and may be subject to prosecution. ] Should you wish to familiarise yourself with the relevant legislation, or check my facts, a copy of the ECT Act is available on-line via the Government's web site: http://www.gov.za/gazette/acts/2002/a25-02.pdf or http://www.polity.org.za/pdf/ElectronicCommunications.pdf or http://www.internet.org.za/ect_act.html#Unsolicited_goods_services_or_communications
One tactic used by a company recently was to collect all the e-mail addresses mentioned in all the messages received by the employees of that company. This not only included all the "from" addresses, but also all the other addresses in the "to" and "cc" fields. What this means is that if one of your "friends" sends you a joke e-mail and also sends it to someone else at the same time, that third person may think it is OK to send you e-mails as well, and put you on his mailing list. What is worse is that many e-mail programs, including Outlook and Outlook Express, make this practice extremely easy to do, and therefore likly to become more commonplace in future. Many email worms such as KLEZ make this even more problematic by sending your email address to other users automatically.
Do not ask such unscrupulous people to remove your name from your mailing list. Ask them to mark your name as being one who does not want to receive mail. If they indiscriminately add email addresses to their list, there is a good possibility they will simply add your address again.
If you are thinking of advertising anything on the internet, be sure to read Spam, Advertising, and The Media and think very carefully. Also read RFC 3098: "How to Advertise Responsibly Using E-Mail and Newsgroups, - or how NOT to MAKE ENEMIES FAST!"
If you naively think that you can publicise your business activity by sending messages to any email address you can find, watch out! Firstly it’s bad manners. Secondly, it voilates the terms of use of your ISP. Thirdly, it indicates to potential clients that you have absolutely no idea about the internet. Always assume that your clients have been using email for years, even if you have just bought a modem yourself. Common mistakes made in this regard are:
Then there are the MFSA Spam Guidelines. So if you get spam from a South African company,
check to see if they are members of the MFSA and lodge a complaint.
One of the problems with
unsolicited junk mail is that the senders do their best to disguise themselves. So you have to be quite an expert to
hunt them down. Fortunately there is the Spamcop.net service, to
do it for you. There is a free spam reporting option which you can sign up for. A related product is
Spam Deputy,
which does some of the work for you.
The Spam Recycle service
does a similar thing. You forward the e-mail as an attachment to
spamrecycle@chooseyourmail.com and they take care of it for you.
It isn’t clear if your name gets taken off any lists, though. But then nothing is clear with Spam.
The best e-mail checker is Spam Eater Pro which can retrieve spam
before you download it, and report messages to Spam Cop as well. There is a freeware version and a shareware version.
You can get a spam-free e-mail address from despammed.com, which will filter out the spam and send you the rest, but it doesn’t top people from spamming you directly. So it’s a good idea to use if you are about to start with a new address. The problem is that it sometimes throws away legit e-mails as well.
There is a US service called the (US) DMA’s e-Mail Preference Service which attempts to remove your details from spamming lists. It’s a start, but don’t hold your breath.
The BBC ClickOnline program (1 May 2003) did a few stories on Spam:
Microsoft’s Hotmail, one of the largest recipients of spam, advises people to "keep up to date with the
fight against spam" at http://www.cauce.org/.
Also check out their anti-spam resources page
The only way to keep spam out of a Hotmail account is to restrict the people who can send you mail to the same people
you chat to on MSN Messenger. Make sure your own name is NOT on that list. Get Hotmail to delete all other mail.
Their spam filters are junk.
Click on:
Options/Junk Mail Filter/Exclusive [OK]
Options/Junk Mail Deletion/Immediate Deletion [OK]
Options/Safe List
Only add names from people you trust, who are not already in your Hotmail Address Book. And unsubscribe from all those
"services" they offer. You should get about 1 annoying email a month from Microsoft after that.
Update: Hotmail won’t allow you to "block" your own email address. So if a spammer writes to you and uses your
address in both the "To:" and "From:" fields, you can’t use the "block" facility to stop your own address being abused.
Fortunately there is another way out by means of the "Custom Filters" setttings.
(In this example I am using my own
hotmail address which is donnedwards@hotmail.com)
Options/Custom Filters
| Filter 1: Enabled | ||||
| If | ||||
| Then deliver to | ||||
There are web servers out there that just dish out ads. Not only is this annoying but they also place "Cookies" on
your PC so they can track how many times you have received their ads. For example:
Internet advertising server DoubleClick is tracking the online activity of users, recording their names, purchases, and addresses, reports USA Today. DoubleClick is combining the data it accumulates on Web user activity with a direct marketing database of 90 million households maintained by Abacus Direct, which DoubleClick acquired last year. Privacy International’s David Banisar says the move threatens online anonymity, while consumer advocates say they will complain to the FCC. Junkbusters’ Jason Catlett says, "For four years [DoubleClick] has said [the services] don’t identify you personally, and now they’re admitting they are going to identify you." DoubleClick says the practice allows ads to target users better, improving the online experience, and the company also points out that users can opt to not have their use tracked. Banisar claims that opt out language is usually buried in a site’s privacy statement.So it is time to take action!
(USA Today, 26 Jan 2000)
combined version
here but it is probably a bit out of date. Save it as "hosts" without the .txt extension in your Windows directory.
You can turn off
ads in MSN Messenger by using the
Messenger Plus! Extension. If you must use MSN Messenger at all,
try this freeware product. Just say NO when it asks to install the "associated" products.
The new version of the Google Toolbar 2.0 for Internet Explorer has a popup blocking facility. This also helps to get rid of annoying ads
and promotional rubbish, including the ads from this web site. Visit toolbar.google.com for more info.
There is also the Yahoo toolbar, which takes a different approach to using toolbars for searching,
but also features a popup blocker and a built-in spyware detector. For that reason only it is worth
the 3MB download. I have installed it but bring it out only on special occasions.
Speaking of ad blocking and privacy, ZoneAlarm Pro has numerous privacy and security features. There is also a free version with fewer features.
Visit www.zonelabs.com for more details.
I tried it for a while but found it to be too processor-intensive for my slow clunker.
Firefox has better privacy features than Internet Explorer, and has extensions you can load like AdBlock and the google toolbar.
If you or your company has a web site, make sure it is properly secured. Hackers manage to get in and deface web sites every day. The sites of some well known South African companies have been hacked. You can find out the names of some recent sites.
Also, check to see if you need to make the site legally compliant with Chapter VII of the ECT Act (or here). As many as 70% of all South African web sites are not compliant, according to a survey by www.legalsentry.co.za and Buys Inc,
who have published a Compliance Checklist also on ITWeb.
However, a note of caution: there is a difference of opinion on how "mandatory" these criteria are
Also, have a look at
Chapter 6 of Cyberlaw@SA - The Law of the Internet in South Africa (Second Edition) which gives a thorough examination
of the legal issues. I just wish it could be printed out.
Make sure your web site works with the Mozilla Firefox browser as well as Internet Explorer. IE is more forgiving, and doesn't enforce the W3C standards particularly well. So the pages may look fine in IE and look weird in Firefox. On the other hand, pages that work in Firefox generally work in other browsers too. And Firefox is being recommended to users by security experts because it has fewer security vulnerabilities and isn't as system-dependent as IE.
Your browser gives away information about you that advertisers love. Try this page to see what information you are giving away about yourself: http://privacy.net/analyze/
AD-Aware is software
that checks to see if your computer has been infected by "spyware", which is software that
gets installed on your PC (with or without your knowledge) and reports to advertisers what you
are doing, and which web sites you are visiting, so they can send you "promotional
material" in connection with these topics, i.e. SPAM.
There is a more sinister side of spyware: identity theft. A recent example featured on the front page of the Sunday Times newspaper. This article was more unusual in that most bank fraud is kept strictly confidential by the banks, to protect their reputation. The bank mentioned, ABSA, is by no means the first or last "victim" of this kind of theft.
Hacker cleans out bank accounts
Hundreds of thousands of rands stolen via Internet from Absa clients.
By Edwin Lombard
A HACKER is targeting clients of South Africa’s largest bank and has managed to steal hundreds of thousands of rands by breaching their accounts over the Internet.
The Police Commercial Crimes Unit confirmed this week it was investigating nine cases involving thefts from Absa accounts. Absa is the leading South African Internet banker with about 35% of the market and about 300 000 online clients.
Police and bank officials say it appears the perpetrator used "spyware" to gain access to the personal computers of the victims, and, having found out their Internet banking information, had transferred money out of their accounts.
Total losses of R230 000 have been reported to police - but one victim said late on Friday that he had discovered another R300 000 missing from his account.
Absa’s group information security officer, Richard Peasy, said the bank’s "security systems and processes had alerted the bank to suspicious activity before these clients knew about it.
"The transactions were frozen and the process for dealing with potentially fraudulent transactions was instituted," he said.
Peasy said the crook had gained access to personal information of account holders through their own computers and said it had nothing to do with the bank.
Hbr> "As with other banking channels, no fraud can take place on Internet banking accounts without the fraudster obtaining the client’s Internet banking access account number and PIN number," he said.
Peasy said it appeared the fraudster had sent unsuspecting clients an e-mail, which, when it was opened, installed software that recorded information.
"It is a new trend called spyware. This has got nothing to do with the bank. It records keystrokes, like your account and PIN number, and then it e-mails the information to a Hotmail mailbox," he said.
Peasy refused to say how many Absa clients had been defrauded or how much money was involved, saying it was "a forensic issue".
The full article is here. The Sunday Times web site even carried a special report on hacking. As the case unfolded, another article made the inside pages on 21st September:
Alleged Absa hacker’s secrets revealed in court
By Edwin Lombard
The first details of how the man accused of being the Absa hacker allegedly stole money from bank accounts over the Internet emerged in court this week.
Johannes Fourie, 35, allegedly raided accounts held with FNB as well as Absa and used the stolen cash to buy gold coins, home theatre systems and 15 laptop computers, all worth hundreds of thousands of rands, with a computer program that cost a mere 100.
Called eBlaster, the program is advertised as a product that allows users "to know exactly what your employees or family are doing on the Internet, even if you are thousands of miles away".
But in Fourie’s case, prosecutor Anthony Stephen alleged eBlaster gave Fourie the passwords to at least 14 bank accounts held by Absa and FNB clients, from whom the Durbanville computer programmer allegedly transferred about R106 000 into two accounts of his own.
According to the charge sheet, Fourie bought the eBlaster program and then used it to send e-mail messages to unsuspecting Absa and FNB clients.
The charge sheet does not state how Fourie obtained their e-mail addresses.
When the victims opened e-mail allegedly sent by Fourie, the eBlaster program was automatically activated and secretly installed on the victim’s computer. The software registered and stored all the information that victims fed into their computers, including keystrokes for their bank accounts’ PIN numbers.
This information was sent back to Fourie’s computer.
On Spectrosoft, an Internet surveillance company’s website, eBlaster is touted as the only product on the market that records and instantly forwards e-mails. It also records chat-room conversations and websites visited by its victims.
The full article is here. This was followed by a front page headline article on 5th October which claimed that the ABSA counter-measures were easy to bypass by logging mouse movements as well as keystrokes. Yawn. Standard Bank published an ad in the same edition where they announced that their keypad would randomly display the numbers, making it more difficult for spies to correlate mouse movements with the numbers. Some of the spyware can do this, but it uses more bandwidth so it may be more difficult to spy on people without being detected.
eBlaster 3.0 sells for $100-$150, and is one of a number of Spy Software
products. Scary stuff. A quick search on google.com will show you that there are plenty of other spy software products
out there, as well as anti-spy products. See www.anti-spy.com and the list of spyware that it can be detected. Before you get too despondent, there are numeorus anti-spyware sites and programs, many of which are listed on the
PC Hell Spyware Removal page. Also, run the Pest Scan, also listed below.
Is this a case of taking a thief to catch a thief? The products page of www.spywareremove.com lists two spyware removal programs, and a spyware program as well! Nothing is simple in the spy-vs-spy world of the internet. And this one only costs $20.
But wait, there is a free one too! It isn’t capable of remote spying, but it would be suitable for spying on your own family, colleagues or anyone where you have access to their computer. And they have a link to a program that is supposed to stop this kind of thing. See www.anti-keyloggers.com
On the bright side, I am happy to report that my own bank has the best security of all the banks in South Africa.
www.eBucks.com has a feature called "InContact" where you are notified by
SMS every time you do a transaction, be it paying for petrol or transferring money between accounts. Now they have added an
SMS notification every time you (or someone else) logs in to your account. So even if a hacker steals your password and logs
in to see your finances, you’ll know. Cool!
But a hacker could always change the number the SMS messages are sent to, so be on the lookout. Also, the SMS may not arrive immediately. I have experienced a 5 hour delay.
Provided you take the right precautions they guarantee to refund your money if fraud is committed.
On the weekend the follow-up article appeared, ebucks.com went down for maintenance, and stayed down until 3pm on Tuesday, 23rd September. It remained intermittently working for the rest of the month. In a rare move, the bank apologised for the inconvenience and refunded banking charges for the month.
eBucks have now added an additional security feature, which only costs R50 as a once-off,
and you can use accumulated eBucks currency to pay for it. It’s an "ActivCard" keyring, or a "DigiTag". Each device
has a serial number, and when you switch it on it will generate an 8-digit number to use when you log
in. The number is different every time, and since the keyring is registered to a specific account, another
keyring doesn’t work on your account. The nice thing about this system is that it is hacker-proof, provided
your keyring doesn’t get stolen, and even then, the thief would still have to know your user name and password.
Standard Bank has some interesting things to check when doing internet banking. They are probably
the most secure online bank in terms of password access only.
They have also provided optional free antivirus checking software ("McAfee VirusScan ASaP) and personal firewall software to all their online banking customers. Download it after logging in, but NOT if you "only" have a 56k modem - it just isn’t fast enough.
They have also added a numeric keypad when you type in your pin number, which was recently upgraded to put the numbers in random order on the screen. This forces the spy to capture mouse movements and a screen shot of the keypad, which raises the stakes quite a bit. Well done!
With Standard Bank you have a pin number AND a password. The only problem with the McAfee software it it requires a fast internet connection. 56k modems don’t really cut it, because the software can spend the first 10-20 minutes downloading updates when you connect.
If you’re not a Standard Bank account holder, you can get the McAfee ASaP antivirus and firewall
software from MSN South Africa or from
DRS ASaP from R39 per month just for the
antivirus product without the firewall. It’s cheaper to buy the VirusScan 7.0 product from
www.digitalplanet.co.za for R367 which works out at R27 per month for a year. Hopefully it won’t
use up as much bandwidth either. Personally I wouldn't touch these products because they place a huge drain on your system by comparison to NOD32 and Sygate Personal Firewall. (See info)
Nedbank has some other interesting security features in their on-line banking. These include:
ABSA is in the process of introducing the first in a range of security enhancements to their Internet Banking platform. The first initiative will combat current keylogging software to a certain extent through the introduction of an on screen keypad. The keypad will in future be the sole medium through which confidential access details are entered when logging on to and registering for Internet Banking.
"Absa is pleased to announce that shortly we will be offering our Internet Banking customers free personal firewall and anti-virus software to help you protect the information on your computer. This software will be available at no cost to our Internet Banking customers for one year." Hopefully its not the bandwidth-intensive McAfee software.
There is a category of spyware removal tools and web sites that do it on-line listed at TUCOWS, and on MajorGeeks.com. Perhaps some of the antivirus scanners can help detect spyware as well. They will also stop your PC spewing out email addresses all over the place by stopping all those mass-mailing viruses out there.
www.spywareinfo.com provides a quick Online Spyware scan. PestPatrol finds more bugs, but you have to buy their software to remove them. For home use I prefer AD-Aware, because its free.
The PestPatrol Corporate Edition software is a must in a business network. Also check out the corporate version of AntiKeylogger, which can detect key logging in the evaluation version.
There are over 2.5 million PCs around the world that are being put to good use when they would otherwise not be busy.
It’s a concept called Grid computing and it basically entails millions of PCs all tackling tiny parts of a huge problem.
I have been testing one at www.grid.org which is a cancer research project that is co-ordinated by the Chemistry department
at Oxford University. It is completely secure and private, and the software does not get in the way at all. And it shows you what is going on
by means of a screen saver. Download the software and install it on your PC if you want to help.
Ever notice how the number on the back of a vehicle for "How’s My Driving" is difficult to read or has a few digits missing?
Or you phone the number and the switchboard operator puts you through to the wrong department? Ever wish you could
report bad driving to someone who is willing to do something about it? Now you can. And you can do it anonymously if you choose.
An independent company called "Drive Report" has a call centre that takes your call 24x7x365. And because it’s an 0860 number you save money on the call. Provide the vehicle registration number of the vehicle number (often a much larger 4 digit number) and other relevant details. When you give your phone number and name it remains private, and can be hidden from the transport company. And you can request feedback on the incident, even if you chose to remain anonymous. The feedback is returned through the monitoring company, usually via email of SMS.
The transport manager or relevant person receives an SMS within minutes of the incident, followed up by an email report, so by the time the driver gets back to the depot he has some explaining to do. Each driver has personally signed a code of conduct, and all reported incidents (good or bad) are kept on record. Some of the incidents that have been reported are quite hair raising: buses racing one another, passengers being thrown off the bus for complaining about bad driving, removal vans taking passengers on board, and so on. Plus all the usual dangerous behaviour, mechanical problems, emergency situations and more. The transport managers use it to weed out the "bad apples" that place their vehicles and passengers lives at risk. The good drivers get noted too, and receive recognition for it. It’s an easy number to remember: 0860-555-999 (local call). Look out for the stickers on the back of lorries, buses, and delivery vans.
For those vehicles without the Drive Report sticker, there is also the Department of Transport's "National Traffic Call Centre (NTCC) for Voluntary Public Traffic Observers". You have to register with them as an observer. Then you can report bad driving online or phone 0861-400-800 (long distance call) for any vehicle with a South African registration plate.
It sounds like something out of "1984" (the book) or science fiction: "Big Brother watching you" as you listen to the radio. In this case its only partially true. Yahoo.com has always advised visitors that it uses various methods to collect "private information" about the people who visit its web site. Most of this is done to find out what services work, and what don’t. In the case of LaunchCast, they want you to tell them what kind of music you like. In addition to the obvious marketing benefits of this, the reason they want to know is so that they can play you the music that you want to hear, on your own private radio station. Which just goes to prove that sometimes it helps to tell people what you like.
There are many other internet-based radio systems, including Radio@Netscape and MSN Radio where they allow you to rate a song, but the Yahoo service is the only one that actually allows you to benefit directly from your ratings. The Netscape one requires that you download a separate player, that works with IE. It limits your listening to about an hour a day. The MSN one works better in Windows Media Player 10, but still works OK in the older ones too. So far the only radio player that I use regularly that works with Firefox is the BBC News one. And you can always get the british flavour at www.radiofreevirgin.com where they have a downloadable player or a browser popup player.
 |
Peter Cheales is a man who is passionate about customer service. And he’s provided a way for customers to complain or
complement their favourite (or not so favourite) company. He’s built up a list of participating Companies Who Care and another list of Companies Who Don’t. It’s a brilliant idea, and you can get a good idea of the customer
service for a given company before you sign on the dotted line.
What’s more, your contact details remain private on the www.hellopeter.com web site, and only the relevant details are provided to the
customer complaint department to help them fix your problem. If they are listening, that is.
The down side of all this: the companies have to pay to receive the complaints. Obviously there is a cost involved in running a web site such as this, but there is no vetting of what is said or whether it is true. So a disgruntled former employee could make up a ficticious complaint and the company concerned has to pay to reply to it. All I can say is that the Companies Who Care are putting their money where their mouth is and listening to their customers. It takes a special kind of commitment to improving service to do that.
It isn’t surprising that Telkom™
is one of the companies who don’t care.
Even companies with the best intentions make mistakes. But it takes a special kind of commitment to service
to admit the mistakes and fix them. And it takes good people to come forward and own up when
things need fixing.
Autopage was in business before cell phones came out. I had a pager with them when I started my business in 1987.
When car phones came out I spent R17000 to have one installed in my Golf, because finally my customers
could dial me on an 081 and speak to me directly, rather than send messages into the blue and wonder
whether I would ever call back. When cell phones came in I traded my Siemens C30 motophone and 081 number for
a Motorola cell phone at a tenth of the price and got an 082 number.
Several years later when I needed a new number, I went to AutoPage at Vodaworld and signed up. That was 4 years ago, and the contract is about to come to an end. In the meantime my experience with dealing with Autopage was frustrating, mostly because I would make a request but not get any feedback about whether it was done. Faxes would disappear into black holes. Emails went unacknowledged. If I asked to speak to a supervisor and they were busy I would be promised a return call, but none was made. And the final stray was when I phoned to find out when my contract would end and was told that my 24 month contract could only be ended after 25 months. That's when I went into ballistic mode.
Once their senior management got to hear of this, at first they couldn't believe it and then they fixed it.
They acted ethically and with integrity. And they took the time to do it right. Then they
responded postively. They even offered to meet with me face to face.
When I had the meeting with two of their directors they listened and took notes. Then they told me
that they had taken my complaint seriously and they had already taken several steps to ensure
that the changes were implemented. They even rewrote the terms of their contract.
They didn't do a "PR job" on me. I didn't get the feeling they were trying to patronise me or gloss over important issues. I left with the profound impression that they were good people trying to make the best of a difficult situation. In my case they succeeded, beyond my expectations.
Their commitment to customer service is demonstrated in several ways:
new contract is posted on their web site. The pre-printed forms still
have the old wording on it, but once all the stock runs out it will be reprinted with the new wording.
In the meantime a clear memo has been sent out and posted on their internal web site to ensure that it is
correctly implemented.I guess it also helps to understand how the call centre works. When you phone in the call centre operator is supposed to sort the matter out. A lot of stuff needs to be followed up with faxes so they have documentary proof that the correct person made the request. This is to stop aunauthorised and/or malicious requests. So if they tell you that you need to fill in a form and fax it to them, be nice. It's for your own protection. If they can't help you and you ask to speak to a supervisor, ask for the operator's name, and the supervisor's name, and write it down. If the problem can't be fixed by them, ask to have it escalated to the Customer Relationship department. They will need to know the names of the people involved so that they can be retrained, counselled or reprimanded.
Please scan your PC for viruses by clicking on any of these sites:
Visit the Microsoft Windows Update web site and please
install all Critical Updates. The address is
http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/
If you don’t have an anti-virus program on your home computer, please do everyone a favour and get one.
You can download a free one
from
www.free-av.com. I used the AntiVir program,
and it is nice except that you have to get it to do the downloads manually, unless you use the scheduler.
It will remind you every two weeks or so.
It only seems to slow the machine down if you start scanning your hard drive and reading all the files,
such as when doing a spyware scan. But you can disable it during this time, and re-enable it afterwards.
This is the best one to use for slow machines.
Another free one to try that also scans your email
is AVG Free Edition. It has a download scheduler built in, and found a few files that the
Norton Antivirus program missed. I used to use Norton Antivirus but the newer versions have become "bloatware"
ans slow my old clunker down to a crawl. The AVG program is also compatable with the new security features of
WindowsXP SP2.
The one I have bought after trying it for 30 days is NOD32.
It is very fast, uses hardly any RAM, does small updates often (if you want it to) and is quite affordable at
around R320+VAT for the first year and R180+VAT after that for home and small business use. Its virus detection mechanism
is extremely accurate, and has detected numerous new viruses before definition files became available. It is also
compatable with Windows XP SP2 and works fine on my slow Pentium II laptop. If you want to spend money on anti-virus
software, look no further. Warning: do NOT attempt to pay for the product using your credit card!
The page that requests this information is an INSECURE page. Rather do a bank transfer.
Windows XP SP2 now has a usuable built-in firewall, that is probably adequate for most users. But for older operating systems you need a firewall.
ZoneAlarm is a free firewall program to protect you from hacking attempts, internet worms and other nasties.
If you are willing to pay for it, ZoneAlarm Pro has numerous privacy and security features, but needs a fast
processor. Visit www.zonelabs.com for more details.
There is another free firewall program called Sygate Personal Firewall that is free for personal use.
I prefer it to the more processor-intensive ZoneAlarm software, and it also has a useful graph that shows how
your network or internet connection is doing. I used to to considerably improve my internet connection at home,
by eliminating all the protocols that were using up bandwidth but not needed.
Before you buy any Memory Management software,
read this article first. It explains why most of their claims are over-hyped. Some of the comments at the end of the article
are extremely interesting too. Rather take a look at TAG and
PerfOpt XP. I found PerfOptXP to give me better (and more stable) results than
MemoryBoost, which I have used before. Memory Boost has a nasty habit of
completely messing up your memory settings when you uninstall it. I have finally settled on a combination of
PerfOptXP on most PCs, and or MemTurbo and PerfOptXP on my laptop, where I end up doing a lot of memory-hungry things all at once.
And PerfOptXP is free. It is more than adequate for most users and servers.
Don’t think that just because you have Antivirus software and a firewall that you are safe. Make sure by checking your computer.
The best checkup is the "Shields Up" facility at grc.com, but there are others:
People make mistakes: People work in companies, financial institutions and other businesses that handle your money and your details. Take my bank for example. They had a "Card Security Week" in collaboration with ITWeb, and published some very useful articles, such as this one:
Customer privacy critical
By Stephen Whitford, ITWeb Journalist
[Johannesburg, 10 April 2003] - Online merchants’ failure to respect their customers’ best interests and maintain their privacy poses a real threat to their online offering and the online community as a whole.
Angus Brown, CEO of eBucks.com, says despite security being taken very seriously by businesses and customers alike, there has been little emphasis on the privacy of customer information.
Brown says that in many instances, businesses have free reign to use customers’ private information.
"It appears few merchants have developed a privacy strategy, and even fewer have a privacy clause on their site. This lack of focus on privacy has allowed businesses to spam their customer base without fear of reprisal."
He says it’s time for customers to start getting tough with online merchants who don’t have privacy clauses.
"Before doing business with a merchant, the customer must demand that their privacy is guaranteed. The information must be protected from third-parties (and will not be sold) and marketing efforts must be permission-based.
"They should also require the merchant to engage in a dispute if information is used inappropriately," he says.
eBucks.com has several measures in place to ensure customers’ privacy is protected.
The full article is here.
The irony is that during "Card Security Week" I received a letter from the same bank:
... If you do not wish to avail of your increased credit card limit, please notify the
FNB Limit Review Department by facsimile on 011 352 9904 or send an email to
fnbcard@fnb.co.za. Remember to quote your
FNB Credit Card account number and daytime contact number.
One hopes that a letter like this is not common practice, since anyone gullible or
ignorant enough to send their credit card number via email, even if requested by their
own bank, deserves to be robbed. Just don’t do it. NEVER send your credit card number by email
to anyone, for any reason, unless you are using a PGP-encrypted email to a trusted address.
FNB have since apologised for their blunder. "I don’t know how we could be so stupid" said one employee.
It isn’t only banks. My Medical ‘Aid’ has done some wierd things in the past. Now they have unilaterally decided to give my private particulars to a third party who are supposed to be looking after me. It was really good of them to let me know. I discovered this by chance some 5 months after it happened. To their credit, the matter has been rectified, and they did apologise. For all the juicy details, click here. There is also other information on medical aids and the weird things they get up to.
One of the great things they have done is introduce a credit card for medical aid purposes.
There is a separate budget facility for expensive medical costs, with 6 months to pay.
Presumably you will be able to claim the costs back from the Medical Aid in the meantime.
It also means that a visit to the pharmacy or doctor will be a little less traumatic because one can
pay with the card. In theory, anyway; not all doctors accept credit cards.
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The following people have sent me unsolicted junk mail:
marketing@computron-me.com
dealers@emirates.net.ae
neville@nctec.co.za
webmaster@intermediaafrica.com (illiterate, ignorant cybersquatter, also 
quite abusive)
I mention these because I know they have mailboxes and they were completely unrepentant about sending me junk mail. Now all the spammers in the world can pick up their email addresses and send them stuff.
I am informed by John Williams at Adams & Adams, “... according to my records, Telkom presently owns no less than 569 registered and pending trade marks.” One wonders why they don't use the ™ or ® marks on their web site or in the phone book. Except for the Yellow Pages logo, of course.
