Question: From reading the news it would appear that companies can no longer spam call me, is this correct?
Answer: In reality companies were from the commencement of the Protection of Personal Information Act, or better known as the POPI Act not allowed to spam call you, unless you gave your permission or if one of the other criteria of section 11 of the POPI Act was met. For purposes of spam calling, it will be difficult for a company to prove that the other criteria are applicable.
Even if you had previously consented to spam calling you are entitled to object thereto once they make contact with you and then they still have to remove you from their call list.
If a consumer receives an unsolicited spam call I suggest taking down the details of the company who is calling you and then reporting them to the Information Regulator, the Information Regulator can be contacted at POPIAComplaints@inforegulator.org.za; you should complete the form 5 as can be found on the Information Regulator’s website being: https://inforegulator.org.za/training/wp/complaints/
Once more and more people complain about spam calling and the Information Regulator issues more compliance notices we will have far less of these spam calls.
The media reports did actually not relate to spam calling, but to unsolicited emails which is also prohibited in terms of the POPI Act. If a listener receives an unsolicited email I would suggest requesting the sender to remove you from their mailing list and then if they don’t do it, to then report them to the Information Regulator via the same route