Legal Articles and Guides

Gauteng Education MEC Panyaza Lesufi has entered the dispute between Vodacom and 'Please Call Me' inventor Nkosana Makate, calling on the cellphone giant to pay up by the end of January. In a tweet, Lesufi says Vodacom will face the 'wrath of the nation' if it did not pay up, according to a TimesLIVE report.

The long protracted legal battle between Vodacom and ‘Mr Please Call Me’ Nkosana Makate (42) seems to be far from over, notes a report on the SowetanLIVE site. The latest salvo between the two comes after Vodacom was reported as saying it had agreed to pay ‘reasonable compensation’ to Makate. However, Makate took to his Facebook page to dispute that he had agreed to what he deemed an ‘insult’.

The Eastern Cape’s multimillion-rand broadband project – at the centre of a legal battle between two state organs – has been ruled irregular by the Eastern Cape High Court (Bhisho). Judge John Smith declared the R220m project – awarded to Liquid Telecom in October 2017 – ‘reviewable’ and that the Eastern Cape entered into the contract without approval from the State Information Technology Agency (Sita).

The ANC is concerned about the digital divide due to high data costs and has joined mobile data service providers in the call for ‘more spectrum’, says a Fin24 report. Noting ‘the cost of data in SA is significantly higher than other African countries’, the ANC's Phelisa Nkomo said the release of spectrum would lessen the network burden of operators. This submission was made on the third and final day of the Competition Commission’s Data Market Inquiry on Friday in Pretoria.

Both Vodacom and MTN have indicated data prices could fall dramatically when access to new radio frequency spectrum becomes available, notes Daily News. This became evident at the Competition Commission’s public hearings as part of its inquiry into the country’s data costs, which are perceived to be abnormally high.

Discovery has moved swiftly to seal the document to contain possible fallout after hundreds of its clients had personal information such as names, ID numbers and contact details disclosed in court papers that have been accessed by third parties. Discovery said yesterday the data was never publicly disclosed and it had taken steps to comply with the Protection of Personal Information Act, notes BusinessLIVE.

Treasury is the latest victim in a spate of hacking attacks aimed at government websites. News24 reports that it received an alert from anonymous Twitter user @VirusSec that Treasury would be his latest target. Moments later, the government department's website was inaccessible.

Hackers using state-of-the-art technology stole and defrauded South Africans out of R250m in a single year, according to the SA Banking Risk Information Centre (Sabric) when releasing the latest digital banking crime statistics yesterday. It revealed that in 2017 cyber-criminals were involved in 13 438 online‚ mobile and Internet banking attacks, and the total sum siphoned off in all digital banking-related crimes during that year was R250m.

An out-of-court agreement has been reached between 'Please Call Me' inventor Nkosana Makate and Vodacom, after the cell giant went to court to apply for a gag order against him, prohibiting the dissemination of any information regarding settlement negotiations between them.

Mweb and Telkom have had to withdraw advertisements that were misleading on the promise of benefits. A TimesLIVE report notes Paul van Ramesdonk had lodged a complaint with the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) against a Telkom advertisement which states ‘Storage: 32 GB‚ 4GB RAM’.

The life insurance industry is on high alert after the cyberattack and blackmail attempt on insurer Liberty. The firm had regained control of its IT systems by yesterday, says a Business Day report. The insurance industry holds sensitive data on millions of clients, including their banking details and medical reports.

In a victory for consumers, telecommunications regulator Icasa says service providers MTN‚ Vodacom and Cell C must provide an option to roll over unused data‚ finally ending the frustration of customers losing unused data after 30 days. A TimesLIVE report says Icasa made the announcement when releasing its review of the 2016 End User and Subscriber Charter Regulations.

The Information Regulator has asked Facebook to contact all South Africans affected by the social network’s data breach, and to state what steps it is taking to ensure users’ data remains safe, says a Business Day report. Facebook said last week that 59 777 Facebook users in SA were ‘potentially impacted’ by the data breach via their friendships with 33 users of a personality quiz app.

One of SA’s top real estate companies that has admitted being the unwitting source of the largest known personal data breach to date in the country claims to have ascertained that the dump of personal information – estimated at 31.6m records – includes the estimated income‚ addresses and cellphone numbers of the likes of President Jacob Zuma‚ Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba and Police Minister Fikile Mbalula. 

In what is being labelled SA's biggest data breach, the personal and sensitive information of an estimated 30m South Africans has been exposed, a leading security developer has discovered. BusinessLIVE says that Tory Hunt, a Microsoft regional director, reported that he had uncovered 'a very large breach' titled 'masterdeeds'.