Another legality question: Indecent spam e-mail 2

[Paul4Meep]

At times, I answer customer e-mails for my company. On several occasions, I have received extremely indecent and pornographic spam e-mail. They actually have pictures. As a gentlemen, I cannot describe them. It made me wonder in disgust how this could be legal. This, as far as I am concerned, should constitute indeceny and give my company and me grounds for a law suit against the company that sent the e-mail. Anybody know the actual legal implications involved? Can they actually legally get away with this? If so, is that only because it is online? If it makes a difference, I live and work in PA.

 

[jsaxe]

Be sure to let us all know if you ever find the sender - That's the problem, these people can hide themselves pretty well.

Your only recourse is filter, filter, filter.

Still, in spite of my efforts and the grandiose claims of my ISP, this crap still gets thru - and I surely don't need a second mortgage, a r*o*l*e*x* knockoff, and certainly not CIa_LiS.

But hey - After 20+ years online, I guess I can recognize a subject line that doesn't need to be opened...

jsae

"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."
Hunter S. Thompson (R.I.P. Doc)

 

[Paul4Meep]

I don't know. Sometimes they have really innocent sounding subjects. The other problem is that, when answering customer e-mails, we don't actually open them ourselves. We open the e-mail program, click the first e-mail in our in box, and after replying each time, the next e-mail automatically opens up.

 

[AdaHacker]

If you have a half-way decent e-mail client, there's probably an option somplace to turn off loading of images and other external references in HTML mails. That will at least save you from having to look at any pictures that slip through the spam filter.

As for whether or not this is legal, I don't really know. But even if it's not, pursuing legal action is probably a losing proposition. As jsaxe noted, spammers can be exceptionally difficult to track down. And even if you can track them down, there's a very good chance that they don't operate in your state or in the US at all, which will probably make suing them complicated and expensive, if not impossible.

It would probably be wiser to just investing the money in a better anti-spam solution. That at least has a good chance of actually reducing the amount of spam you see.

 

[monkeylizard]

Free porn? I don't understand what the problem is...

Seriously though, much of the spam originates off-shore. Even the feds have a hard time catching/prosecuting them. Lots of news articles on this lately. I think the top spammer dude just moved his drugs-by-mail operation to the Dominican Republic.

Monkeylizard
If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith. -Albert Einstein-

 

[alexhu]

there's a very good chance that they don't operate in your state or in the US at all

actually about 50 -50 .

Seriously though, much of the spam originates off-shore

Well, say 50%

Anti-virus vendor Sophos recently published some interesting statistics on the country of origin of spam. They call these countries the “dirty dozen”, but it’s really the top three, the US, South Korea and China which are the notable names. These countries have been in the top three for some time now, though the contribution of the US has recently been dropping a bit in relative terms.


1. United States (35.7 percent)
2. South Korea (24.9 percent)
3. China and Hong Kong (9.7 percent)
4. France (3.1 percent)
5. Spain (2.7 percent)
6. Canada (2.6 percent)
7. Japan (2.1 percent)
8. Brazil (1.9 percent)
9. United Kingdom (1.5 percent)
10. Germany (1.2 percent)
11. Australia (1.2 percent)
12. Poland (1.2 percent)

Alex

 

[tazuk]

Just a small aside (ignoring the legal issues)..

Are these emails received on a publicised email address (eg contact email from website)? If so your company should look to obfuscate the email address to reduce the possibility of it being harvested - there are various scripts / methodologies available in the relevant forums on this site to do this (dependant on the technology involved).

HTH

TazUk

Blue-screening PCs since 1998

 

[audiopro]

There is always a danger that you can filter out some valuble business contacts as some of these spammers are very clever in disguising their intentions. We have cut the amount of junk received since we adopted contact forms rather than just issue an email address. The form is submitted and emailed from the server so the destination is never revealed.
In addition, using contact forms means that the format of incomming data is constant and makes it easier to deal with.

Keith

http://www.studiosoft.co.uk

 

[chiph]

Sorry - this is a known hazard of having a well-publicized email address. I would take AdaHacker's suggestion of filtering any pictures, active-x objects, and javascript from it before viewing. This might protect you from most viruses and spyware, but won't do anything for protecting you from sexual content.

Sigh. I remember fondly when email was all text and no HTML. Life was simpler then...

Chip H.


____________________________________________________________________
If you want to get the best response to a question, please read FAQ222-2244 first

 

[malaycobra]

Why can't we go after the companies who advertise through spam? There must be a way to contact them or it would be a pretty useless advert.

If the advertisers were held responsible for the actions of the spammers I think it would stop (or reduce greatly), very quickly.

 

[eyec]

many states and even the Feds are trying to "legally" stop some of this happening, but it is going to be a hit or miss thing and never ending.

in my mind the ultimte recourse is the Delete key, never hit the link to "optout or remove your email from this XXXX". that only tells the spammer they have a real email address to continue to send you stuff. if you continue to ignore and just delete this stuff most spammers will utlimately delete your email address.

 

[sleipnir214]

Why can't we go after the companies who advertise through spam?

It depends. If a spam advertising a site owned by a company in Morroco arrives at my computer in the U.S. via a spam zombie in Hong Kong, who do I go after?

In what court's jurisdiction do I take action? I either have to hire a lawyer in Morroco to pursue the matter for me, or sue in U.S. court and win an empty victory, as the "defendant" will have never showed up and will not change his behavior because the court can't enforce its decision.

If the advertiser, the emailer, and I are all in the U.S., I have to contend with a legal system that must balance control of actions with free speech issues. If neither the advertiser nor the email have forged headers or otherwise obfuscated the email trail, there's not a whole lot a single receiver can do.

There have been a lot of cases of late in which U.S. service providers, such has Microsoft or AOL, have won huge judgements against major spammers. But they've been able to do so by proving that the spammers have caused large expenses for the ISPs. You have to sue, I believe, for a minimum of $50000 US if you are going to sue in Federal court.



I've often wondered that if the receiver email address is of the form "user@student_accounts.ny.k12.ny.us", then could the sender of sexually-explicit emails to those addresses be nailed under some child-endangerment law, as the sender could be reasonably expected to infer that the recipients would be minors.

Want the best answers? Ask the best questions!

TANSTAAFL!!

 

[svanels]

What about if we just sue Micro$oft?

Effects:
1) We can find some financial compensation
2) Microsoft goes after the big spammers because they can claim they are loosing money, (because M$ has to pay us)
3) We will have lots of people working (lawyers, clerks, judges, postman etc..) maybe the economic boost we all are waiting on
4) Everyboddy happy.

Steven

 

[eyec]

in many cases ISPs are "saved harmless" from this sort of action

 

[eyec]

check out a Google Map of spam activity.

http://www.mailinator.com/mailinator/map.html

 

[Thadeus]

What about if we just sue Micro$oft?

...and then we can sue Bic for making pens able to write ransom letters... What were they doing making pens so vulnerable?

~Thadeus

 

[svanels]

Thadeus, but is that not already happening in the USA?

If the boyfriend of a well known actress is sueing the NY ZOO because he was bitten by a tamandua in his big toe.

(he jumped the fence to disturb the animal )

Possible counter actions:
1) The ZOO could sue him because he disobeyed the sign: "Don't Feed the Animals"
2) The tamandue could file against him claiming an assault using poisoned meat.

Steven