During the last few years, courts have increasingly found that
junk e-mail is illegal if it violates an Internet Service Provider's
terms of service, uses an ISPs domain name or trademark without
authorization, falsifies point-of-origin information, or otherwise
deceives recipients. Courts have found senders of spam to be liable
for damages and injunctive relief under several federal statutes,
including the Lanham Act, the Federal Trademark Dilution Act,
the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and have also ruled that spammers
may be liable under state-law claims, such as interference with
personal property, if the spam has imposed a cost or other injury
upon the plaintiff.
What kind of anti-spamming legislation has been proposed?
Unfortunatly spam legislation has not yet been enacted at the
federal level. Recently, the Unsolicited Electronic Mail
Act of 2001 (H.R. 95) was introduced in the House of Representatives.
H.R. 95 would require unsolicited commercial e-mail messages to
be labelled and to include opt-out instructions, and would prohibit
false routing information in such messages. It also would
prohibit the sending of unsolicited commercial e-mail in violation
of an Internet service provider's policies as long as the provider
has prominently posted its policies. The proposed
law provides for criminal penalties for fraudulent routing information;
FTC enforcement; and civil suits that may recover the greater
of actual damages or statutory damages of $500 per violation (to
a maximum of $50,000), as well as punitive damages, costs, and
attorneys' fees.
Many states have enacted statutes that restrict spam. Usually,
these statutes: (1) prohibit the use of false routing information;
(2) require the e-mail to contain effective opt-out instructions
so that a recipient can ask to be removed from the spammer's mailing
list; (3) require the e-mail to contain a label; and/or (4) prohibit
the use of misleading information in the subject line of the message.
For example, California Assembly Bill 1629 permits ISPS to sue
those who, having notice of an ISPs policy, send unsolicited commercial
messages in violation of that policy. Another California statute,
Assembly Bill 1676, requires unsolicited e- mail advertisements
to provide for and honor opt-out requests and requires ads to
be labelled as such in the subject line of the e-mail. Maryland
House Bill 140 (Senate Bill 222) prohibits the use of e-mail with
an intent to harass but includes an exception for "peaceable
activity intended to express political views or provide information
to others." The Virginia law, House Bill 1668 (Senate Bill
881), which is effective July 1, 1999, makes it a crime to falsify
or forge e-mail message transmission information in connection
with unsolicited bulk e- mail and also to knowingly sell, give,
distribute, or possess software whose principal purpose is to
facilitate unsolicited bulk e-mail. The Virginia law permits both
ISPs and individuals to obtain damages. Washington House Bill
2752 prohibits false headers and misleading subject lines in unsolicited
commercial e-mail messages sent or received from Washington state.
The Washington law allows recipients of unsolicited commercial
e-mail to collect $500 for each occurrence.
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Explorer and see an alert displayed here then it is an indication
that your computer is infected with one or more spyware
programs that we can scan for. If you do not see any alert
displayed in the center of this notice then our scan did
not detect any of the 122 spyware programs we can scan for,
however, there are still many other programs out there that
we can not yet scan for.
Please note: Currently
we can scan for a 122 distinct spyware programs that can
effect PC users and the alert will only be display if a
specific targeted program is identified. Unfortunately,
we are limited to finding only certain types of spyware
and there are many other forms of spyware and adware that
we can not currently test for.
In addition, our test scan does not
work well with NetScape or other browsers, if you suspect
that you might have spyware on your computer please feel
free to check this page while using Internet Explorer.
Also, if you have a Personal FireWall installed it may
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Additional Info on Spamming
If you are concerned about spamming we have some excellent information
resources geared toward the web master or site owner.
Email Marketing Ethics
and Spam Reporting
Top 10 Ways To Legitimately Ask For
Your Visitor's Contact Info
Fight Guest Book and Public Forum
Spam!
How to Protect Web Site Email Addresses
From Harvesters and Spammers
Laws & Regulations Against Spam
How do spammers get people's email
addresses?
Spam Fighter's Toolkit
How and Where to Report Spam Abuse
State Laws
http://www.spamlaws.com/state/summary.html
Europeian
http://www.spamlaws.com/eu.html
World Laws
http://www.spamlaws.com/world.html
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Help us raise awareness of the problems of spyware by alerting
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their computers. If we can alert consumers to this problem
it will benefit all of us as a whole. Only through awareness
will it be possible to eventually stop these unethical marketing
practices. If you would like to help us simply add the following
remote script to your web site which will alert your viewers
and visitors if they have spyware installed on their computers.
<script language="JavaScript"
src="http://www.unwantedlinks.com/parasite/parasite3.js">
</script>
This script can be placed anywhere in the body of your
site and remains totally invisible unless it detects at
least one of several browser based spyware plug-ins (including
TopText). Therefore, the spyware alert will only be viewable
to those viewers who have at least one of the identified
spyware programs installed at which point it will display
an simple text alert letting them know about it. Our script
can currently identify 124 different spyware programs. (
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and to see a sample click here!)
Or feel free to use a copy of our spyware quotes script
to help raise awareness which appears in our left panel
<script language="JavaScript"
src="http://www.unwantedlinks.com/spywarequotes-feed.js"
type="text/JavaScript"></script>
This script will feed one quote at the exact location it
is placed within your site. It rotates a total of 30 random
spyware quotes. (This script will display additional random
quotes if it is included more than once) You can enclose
it in font tags to match your site text.
Here is a sample of how it looks.
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