Spam In Microfinance
Published by Jerry Ostradicky, | 23 Apr 2010 at 05:30 pm
At some point, everyone has received an email or message, whether it be through facebook, gmail, MSN, etc, from an annonymous person saying that they would like to meet up. I think most people know the trick by now, but every once and a while, it looks real. Earlier this month, I received an email on Wokai that I got a message from a new user. I didn’t recognize the name, but luckily I was busy and didn’t open it. It was a spam email that was sent out to all users. I don’t think the email would have done too much harm, but it was unexpected to see it within the microfinance community. Wokai, had caught this the next day and had done a great job of sending out a formal apology and letting everybody know of the incident. I’m not quite sure what all it entails on the backend to help stop this in the future, I’m sure Wokai has already solved it. The spam wasn’t a big issue, but it sucks to see that it is in microfinance as well. I’m sure it has already happened a bunch, but this was one case that didn’t get caught by any of my filters either, so it stood out. I think with the close circle of people in the microfinance community, as well as the smart people building out platforms/MFIs, we can narrow down the spammers, but it just sucks knowing that first time lenders could get a spam email and get discouraged. Props to Wokai for handling the situation so professionally.
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