SMS spam has grown into a profitable industry in South Africa, as SMS has a further reach than email due to our economic and technological climate. Spam is a growing concern amongst users and security advisors. As SMS’s are also continually used in phishing scams, which trick users into revealing confidential data such as banking details.

MyBroadband.co.za recently released a list of the country’s top SMS spamming companies which were found to be in contravention of established spamming guidelines, set out by the Wireless Application Service Providers’ Association (WASPA). WASPA recently released their 7th version of it’s code of conduct for it’s members that also deals with how service providers may send out notification messages and also tightens the manner in which unsubscribe requests are handled.

The top offenders include well known service providers, such as Exactmobile, Vodacom, iTouch and the Internal WASP Service of MTN. It is interesting to note that many of these service providers are repeat offenders, and have on more than one occasion been fined by WASPA. You may view the full lists of offenders, along with thier fine amounts here.

Tags: Advertising, Communication, Enterprise, Internet, Security, Technology, Vodacom, Web

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 20th, 2010 at 11:14 and is filed under Web. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.