Newsletter Archive

DATE:03-23-01
SUBJECT:Spam And The Law

Welcome to The Internet 800 Directory Newsletter. This week I want to inform you of a problem I ran into. I battled with this issue for over eight weeks.

What happened was, back in February of this year, a spammer in California started listing one of our e-mail addresses as the "reply to" address on their spam. They sent millions of e-mails in each mailing. Our mail server was getting hammered every time they did a mailing. Any list that large has several bad email addresses and we received every "Mail could not be sent..." message these generated. plus we received every reply and request not to be bothered again.

The subject line of the e-mail was, "GUARANTEED WAY TO QUICKLY HAVE EXCELLENT CREDIT" and the only contact information displayed in the e-mail was an address in California. The address belonged to a company that provides PO boxes for rent and was a dead end.

After talking with an Attorney, he informed me that by using a domain name that does not belong to them as the "From:" and "Reply To:" in the UCE email, they have broken federal law. He suggested that I might do one or both of the following:

Contact the FBI Computer Crime Unit or a local FBI office.
Contact the Attorney General and file a complaint.

Following his advice I called the local office of the FBI. The agent I spoke with told me, they don't get involved until I could document $10,000 or more in damages. Next, I sent a letter to the Attorney General in California, attached to the letter was a copy of the e-mail this company was sending out. We received a reply from the Attorney General thanking us for bring this information to their attention and letting us know they would retain our complaint in their consumer files to help them in pinpointing problem areas. They also attached an article entitled, "New ID Is A Bad Idea". This point of the article was, following the steps outlined in the e-mail could land you in jail. I guess they thought we were going use this company's service and they hoped to discourage us.

Neither of these organizations helped solve my problem.

After several weeks, I was able to make this company stop using our e-mail address. Each time they would start sending out their mailing, I would start receiving the "Mail could not be sent..." messages. From these returns, I discovered which ISP they were using. As soon as each event occurred, I contacted the ISP they were using to send the e-mail. I explained the situation and the account was immediately closed. This went on two or three times a week until they finally stopped using our email address in their mass mailings.

This experience has taught me a lesson in reality. What good are new laws to control spam on the Internet if there is no enforcement? This company was breaking the current laws in as clear a manner as possible and seemingly had nothing to fear. If this one law were enforced, there would be no need for more laws. Companies that use false return addresses in their mass mailings would be made to pay for the consequences of their actions. For the consumers, the problem of spam goes away because, if you didn't want to receive e-mail from that company again you could just block or filter future mailings.

Enforcement of current laws cost money and doesn't get the positive press that creating new laws receives. Each negative occurrence involving the Internet causes an outcry that "something" be done. Those whose careers depend upon your vote do their job and create new laws. As each law is passed, the honest person struggles to comply with it, while the bandit continues business as usual. I'm not sure how we can break this cycle.

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