With school holidays in full-swing, the official internet industry representative body (IRB) ISPA is removing an average of three to four problematic websites from the local Internet every week.
Online scammers target different age groups for different types of scams, with older adults more likely to be fooled by romance and charity donation scams, middle-aged adults often falling victim to investment scams and pyramid schemes, and young adults to virtual currency scams.
Schoolgoers are not immune from being targeted, with fake giveaways, fake scholarships and job recruitment scams being the most common.
To target South Africans, many of these scams rely on local websites. These offer anything from fake training certificates and fake job recruitment (for a “fee”) to fake puppies. The scammers – frequently based overseas – set up websites pretending to be local businesses because consumers are more likely to purchase fake goods from a site that appears to be locally operated.
ISPA’s take-down notice (TDN) procedure can be used by a parent, guardian or anyone else who reasonably suspects that a website is unlawful. Once a take-down is lodged for a site, the site host must act expeditiously to remove the site, ensuring that nobody else can be scammed by that website. Reporting and eliminating problematic online content boosts online safety for all South Africans.
ISPA chair Sasha Booth-Beharilal comments: “Online threats to the country’s children are real, but they can be mitigated by parents taking progressive action in the face of potential danger.”
Of the take-downs accepted by ISPA last year, 44% were for security-related infringements (scam sites and phishing sites), 40% were for intellectual property rights infringements (trademark and copyright claims) and 6% concerned human dignity (defamation or disclosure of personal information).
ISPA can only accept take-down requests that fall within its jurisdiction, and a large portion of the content reported via the take-down notice is hosted overseas. Only a third of the take-downs received involve content hosted by ISPA’s members, but the process is extremely effective for dealing with valid requests, with 96% of the accepted take-down notices resulting in the removal of the website content.
It must be noted that ISPA does not assess the validity of the legal claims made in a take-down notice. To prevent abuse of the process, the provisioning legislation – the Electronic Communications & Transactions Act, 2002 (ECT Act) – stipulates that any person who lodges a take-down knowing that it misrepresents the facts, is liable for damages for any resulting wrongful take-down. The ECT Act gives ISPA an administrative role in processing the take-down requests. ISPA verifies that each take-down notice meets the requirements set out in the Act, and that it is correctly targeted at an ISPA member. A valid take-down notice typically results in the removal of a website within 48 hours.
ISPA’s take-down notice process is a significant benefit of ISPA membership. Once they establish a process for handling take-down notifications, ISPA’s members are shielded from liability for third-party content that they host or carry. ISPA membership now stands at some 235 firms who have committed themselves to upholding the ISPA Code, including the take-down notice process.
Visit https://ispa.org.za/tdn for more information about ISPA’s take-down process.