Hail Vodacom -- the new kings of spam!

Like everyone else with an email account, spam has become one of those mind-numbing annoyances I’ve had to learn to live with.

This study reckons that 83% of all emails being sent are spam. That translates to somewhere between 60-billion and 150-billion emails a day. It sounds like it is overstating it a bit, but any number vaguely approaching that is a lot. I get my fair share — mostly because I have about six different email addresses that I use for different work and at different PCs. Some of these addresses are publicly visible on various websites and so are easily scraped by the address harvesters who feed the spam monster. Each day I probably delete or clear from my various spam traps about 40 or 50 emails I didn’t ask for, have no intention of reading, and absolutely would never think of using to initiate a purchase or transaction of any kind.

So who is responsible for this tsunami of electronic rubbish? There are the usual suspects selling Viagra/Rolexes/penny stocks in oil companies/porn sites and so on. Then there is the more sinister kind who try to spread malicious adware or spyware. And then there’s Vodacom.

Last night, as I was hitting the delete button through my inbox, a tiny corner of one email was visible in the preview screen. The colours looked familiar, so I scrolled down. Yip, I was right. The well-known colours, typeface and layout of Vodacom were evident in one piece of junk email. But the text was all in French.

A screen grab of the offending email — click on it to view the full image.

Now I’ve never been to France or any other French-speaking country. But I did once go to a dance with a French girl. I didn’t pick up any handy French phrases that night, unless you count “Come on, Aveline — why can’t I have just one little peek?” (“Venez sur Aveline — pourquoi est-ce que je ne peux pas avoir juste un peu coup d’oeil?“, if you must know).

That wasn’t going to help me much with this translation (unless Vodacom has significantly changed its core business). But the email seemed to present a special offer for Vodacom customers. If I accepted its offer, I would be able to buy something or other for $350, including installation. A rather sad-looking man appears in the ad, scowling at his computer screen, so presumably the offer doesn’t come with any meaningful support.

Other clues in the ad led me to the conclusion that the offer is meant for residents of the Democratic Republic of Congo — Kinshasa is given as a physical address and the web domain listed uses the suffix “.cd”.

So the email didn’t come from Vodacom South Africa, but rather from one of its subsidiaries. Or, more correctly, an entity that is a joint venture between Vodacom International Limited and Congolese Wireless Network.

But, shareholding aside, as a South African customer I am familiar with the Vodacom brand and logo. So I’m curious. Vodacom is a respectable South African company. Its marketing campaigns are world class, and it seems to have a clear understanding of what makes its customers tick. Why, then, would it allow its brand to be used in a campaign that just serves to get up customers’ noses? And that is so hopelessly misdirected that someone sitting on the other side of the continent gets the message instead of someone who might actually take up the offer?

Then there’s the legality of it. ITWeb sketches some of the rules around spam in South Africa. Let me paraphrase what it says …

Spam is addressed in section 45 of the Electronic Transactions and Communications Act, 25 of 2002. This, basically, requires those who are sending commercial communication to observe three rules. Firstly there must be an opt-out provision so that the consumer can get off the mailing list. Secondly, if the consumer asks, they have to reveal where they got your email address. And thirdly, once you’ve objected to receiving spam from that sender, they shouldn’t send you a second communication.

There was no opt-out provision in the email, just a link to a web page that contained the same ad in the email.

Now I’m pretty sure that Vodacom’s lawyers will shrug and say it comes from a subsidiary outside of South African and so South African legislation doesn’t apply. And they would probably be right. But it is still their brand — and no geographical boundary is going to stop me from thinking evil thoughts about their brand for engaging in spam. And next time I’m faced with choosing a cellphone provider, Vodacom is starting off with a big black mark against its name.

I sent Vodacom an email last night asking if this was standard marketing practice and whether it felt it had transgressed the code of conduct of the Direct Marketing Association. It hasn’t felt moved to reply.

One final curiosity out of all this — I thought for a second that I got the email because I’m a Vodacom subscriber. But on closer inspection, I see that the email came through not to the address Vodacom has on file for me, but to “podcast@mg” — the email address for the Mail & Guardian‘s podcast that only appears on a few websites and is mentioned verbally on the podcast itself. So the address wasn’t bought as part of a legitimate database comprising people who have opted for this sort of communication. Rather, Vodacom bought it from someone who scraped it off a website and then sold it on.

Another dodgy practice. Another black mark.

Spam is the enemy of internet users worldwide. Companies who use it, thereby making it worthwhile for spam database compilers to continue their lucrative business, deserve some sort of penalty. And they don’t deserve the custom of responsible internet users. Vodacom falls into that category.