The regulation of unsolicited electronic communications (SPAM) in South Africa : a comparative study

The practice of spamming (sending unsolicited electronic communications) has been dubbed “the scourge of the 21st century” affecting different stakeholders. This practice is also credited for not only disrupting electronic communications but also, it overloads electronic systems and creates unnecessary costs for those affected than the ones responsible for sending such communications. In trying to address this issue nations have implemented anti-spam laws to combat the scourge. South Africa not lagging behind, has put in place anti-spam provisions to deal with the scourge. The anti-spam provisions are scattered in pieces of legislation dealing with diverse issues including: consumer protection; direct marketing; credit laws; and electronic transactions and communications. In addition to these provisions, an Amendment Bill to one of these laws and two Bills covering cybercrimes and cyber-security issues have been published. In this thesis, a question is asked on whether the current fragmented anti-spam provisions are adequate in protecting consumers. Whether the overlaps between these pieces of legislation are competent to deal with the ever increasing threats on electronic communications at large. Finally, the question as to whether a multi-faceted approach, which includes a Model Law on spam would be a suitable starting point setting out requirements for the sending of unsolicited electronic communications can be sufficient in protecting consumers. And as spam is not only a national but also a global problem, South Africa needs to look at the option of entering into mutual agreements with other countries and organisations in order to combat spam at a global level.Mercantile LawLL. D

International Spam Regulation & Enforcement: Recommendations Following the World Summit on the Information Society

Unsolicited bulk e-mail, or “spam,” is often called the scourge of the information age. Because of the cross-border nature of the Internet, both governments and the private sector are facing many challenges in combating cross-border spam. In recent years, through the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), the international community has committed itself to fight spam on a global level through increased cooperation and enforcement of spam laws. This Note evaluates many of the issues involved in preventing cross-border spam, discusses the latest methods of enforcement in both the private and public sectors, and recommends an approach to the problem in light of the commitments made at WSIS

An Architecture for Spam Regulation

Junk email, commonly referred to as spam, is the current scourge of the Internet. In late 2004, unwanted email messages were being delivered at a rate of 12.4 billion per day. The variety of tools used to combat spam have failed to make a significant impact. Legislative efforts, such as the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, met with substantial enforcement complications. The communications industry responded with a variety of technical advances, such as filters and blacklists, but those innovations are still unable to reliably distinguish between wanted and unwanted messages. Real coordination between legislative and technical spam control tactics has yet to happen, and it has been suggested that the consensus necessary to support such coordination is not available. This Note explains how spammers operate and suggests that failure to effectively combat spam may drive email users to other means of electronic communication. A short history of legal and technical responses to the spam problem is presented, including a look at how the First Amendment affects the effort to reduce spam. Authentication-based systems of regulating spam, proposed by private industry, are then examined in detail. This Note suggests alterations of those systems, allowing for greater First Amendment protection for message senders and greater individual control over receipt of messages. Finally, this Note concludes by arguing that an architectural framework based on these authentication systems would effectively enable legislators and the Internet industry to work together to reduce spare, backed by the support of an Internet community eager for the end of unwanted email messages

An Architecture for Spam Regulation

Junk email, commonly referred to as spam, is the current scourge of the Internet. In late 2004, unwanted email messages were being delivered at a rate of 12.4 billion per day. The variety of tools used to combat spam have failed to make a significant impact. Legislative efforts, such as the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, met with substantial enforcement complications. The communications industry responded with a variety of technical advances, such as filters and blacklists, but those innovations are still unable to reliably distinguish between wanted and unwanted messages. Real coordination between legislative and technical spam control tactics has yet to happen, and it has been suggested that the consensus necessary to support such coordination is not available. This Note explains how spammers operate and suggests that failure to effectively combat spam may drive email users to other means of electronic communication. A short history of legal and technical responses to the spam problem is presented, including a look at how the First Amendment affects the effort to reduce spam. Authentication-based systems of regulating spam, proposed by private industry, are then examined in detail. This Note suggests alterations of those systems, allowing for greater First Amendment protection for message senders and greater individual control over receipt of messages. Finally, this Note concludes by arguing that an architectural framework based on these authentication systems would effectively enable legislators and the Internet industry to work together to reduce spare, backed by the support of an Internet community eager for the end of unwanted email messages

Cybercrime Pervasiveness, Consequences, and Sustainable Counter Strategies

As our connectivity and dependency on technology increases, so does our vulnerability. Technology has provided not only new tools, but also new opportunities for criminals in the digital world. The abuse of new technologies has been threatening economic and Jinancial security and actually devastating the lives of affected indivicluals. In Nigeria, cybercrime has recorded mostly foregin-based individuals and organizations as victims thereby getting Nigeria ranked among the nations with notorious pemasiveness of high-tech crimes. Indeed, adequately formulating a strategy to contain the menace of cybercrime presents aformidable challenge to law enforcement. This paper x-rays noted instances of cybercrime pervasiveness, its devastating consequences, and up-to-date countermeasures in Nigeria It develops an enforceable/sustainable framework to determine how critical infrastructures are put at risk snd how law enforcement should react in responding to the threats

The Fake News Spreading Plague: Was it Preventable?

In 2010, a paper entitled "From Obscurity to Prominence in Minutes: Political Speech and Real-time search" won the Best Paper Prize of the Web Science 2010 Conference. Among its findings were the discovery and documentation of what was termed a "Twitter-bomb", an organized effort to spread misinformation about the democratic candidate Martha Coakley through anonymous Twitter accounts. In this paper, after summarizing the details of that event, we outline the recipe of how social networks are used to spread misinformation. One of the most important steps in such a recipe is the "infiltration" of a community of users who are already engaged in conversations about a topic, to use them as organic spreaders of misinformation in their extended subnetworks. Then, we take this misinformation spreading recipe and indicate how it was successfully used to spread fake news during the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election. The main differences between the scenarios are the use of Facebook instead of Twitter, and the respective motivations (in 2010: political influence; in 2016: financial benefit through online advertising). After situating these events in the broader context of exploiting the Web, we seize this opportunity to address limitations of the reach of research findings and to start a conversation about how communities of researchers can increase their impact on real-world societal issues

Online Consumer Protection: an analysis of the nature and extent of online consumer protection by South African legislation

Includes bibliographical references

Emerging Trends in Cybercrime Awareness in Nigeria

The study examined the current trend in cybercrime awareness and the relationship such trend has with cybercrime vulnerability or victimization. Selecting a sample of 1104 Internet users from Umuahia, Abia State, Nigeria, We found that: 1) awareness of information security was high in that about 2 in every 3 (68%) participants demonstrated a favorable awareness of information security and cybercrime. It was, however, revealed that such a high level of awareness could be partial and weak. 2) most Internet users demonstrated the awareness of fraud-related cybercrime categories (39%), e-theft (15%), hacking (12%), and ATM theft (10%). However, they were rarely aware of sexually related offenses, cyber-terrorism, malware attacks, spam emails, and identity theft as their proportion hovered around 8% and below. 3) Internet users significantly demonstrated more awareness of computer-assisted (M = 2.5; SD = 1.7) than that of computer-focused cybercrime categories (M = 2.2, SD = 1.3), t(1103) = 2.9, p=.000, r =.2. 4) Internet users significantly demonstrated more awareness of property cybercrime (M = 2.54; SD = 1.6) than that of violent cybercrime categories (M = 1.82, SD = 1.2), t(1103) = 5.94, p=.000, r =.3. 5) cybercrime awareness is positively correlated to cybercrime victimization experiences in that participants who demonstrated more awareness of cybercrime experienced significantly more cybercrime victimization (M = 1.66; SD = 1.7) than those who did not demonstrate awareness of cybercrime (M = .73, SD = 1.4), t(1103) = 7.55, p=.000, r =.52

From ZeuS to Zitmo : trends in banking malware

In the crimeware world, financial botnets are a global threat to banking organizations. Such malware purposely performs financial fraud and steals critical information from clients' computers. A common example of banking malware is the ZeuS botnet. Recently, variants of this malware have targeted mobile platforms, as The-ZeuS-in-the-Mobile or Zitmo. With the rise in mobile systems, platform security is becoming a major concern across the mobile world, with rising incidence of compromising Android devices. In similar vein, there have been mobile botnet attacks on iPhones, Blackberry and Symbian devices. In this setting, we report on trends and developments of ZeuS and its variants

Mobile Telephony: Economic and Social Impact

The ubiquitous cell phone is often portrayed as the scourge of civilized society: rude callers on streets, in malls and offices, disturbing those around them with loud talking, school kids constantly texting in class, drivers whose attention has wandered during a cell phone conversation causing accidents, “crackberry” addicts who check their e-mail during real-world conversations, the list goes on. Is this an invention whose result has been to make us all worse off, like Internet spam and phishing attacks? In this paper, I informally survey the rise and impact of cellular technology, both in the US and the world. I find that the reach and the speed of its worldwide diffusion has exceeded even that of the Internet, and certainly with far more reach and speed than the personal computer. Mobile’s economic and social impact has been unprecedented, especially in the developing world where it has been a boon to economic development. While many in the US focus on expanding the diffusion of the PC both domestically and worldwide, as well as expanding the availability of broadband connectivity, I argue that while PC-broadband architecture will continue to be important, the terminal device of choice for most people on this planet will be the mobile, accessing information services over a wireless connection. Mobile telephony is, I believe, the highest impact communications technology of the last 50 years, rivaled only by the Internet.