When Spammers Use YOUR E-Mail Address?

AlphaOne asks: "Is there any legal recourse (in California or otherwise) for a spammer sending mail out with MY e-mail address as the forged 'from'? I have received an (only one for now, thankfully) 'undeliverable' message for an e-mail I never sent. Upon closer investigation, it looks like a bounce from a much larger mailing for a porn site. To make matters worse, the message is JavaScript encoded and I had to spend about 30 minutes decoding the message just to figure out who the spammer could potentially be. I'm confident I know at least who was paying for the spamming, but I may not be able to directly track down the spammer him/herself (as is so often the case). Does anyone know of a precident in a case like this? Is it worth litigating if I get bombarded with bounces, hate-mail, removal requests, or anything else?" SPAM is one thing, but cowardly spammers who have to use someone else's address for their crap advertisements is something else. What can one do in this situation?

Comments

Recourse, and precedent...

[Caradoc]

The infamous "flowers.com" case from Texas provides clear precedent for damages resulting from the use of someone else's e-mail address (or domain.)

Here's a good URL to print out and hand to your lawyer:

http://www.isoc.org/whatsnew/parkerjudgement.htm l

Other commentary from ZDNet:

http://www.zdnet.com/eweek/opinion/1201/01isigh. ht ml

"The judgment is interesting not just for the monetary damages (which seem small to me), but for the reasoning used by the judge: "The defendant's unauthorized use of that address constitutes a common-law nuisance and trespass," wrote Travis County District Judge Suzanne Covington. She also found that the reputation of flowers.com would be permanently damaged if "the hated practice" wasn't stopped immediately."

Contact a Lawyer, and The Police

[scotpurl]

This is a plain theft-of-identity case. They used your name, engaged in public activity that made you look bad, and it's going to cost you time and money to clean it up. (Start keeping a diary of when you work on something, and how long.) Also start contacting ISP's. Yours is a great first stop. Have them pull logs and such, and archive them. That's part of the proof that you did nothing.

Civil suit is fastest, as the Police in some parts of the country are either "duh" or "we're understaffed." Jourisdiction is another one. Civil suits have a wonderful way of cutting across boundaries.

Yeah, you'll spend a coupla grand on a lawyer, but I'll pledge $100 for your lawyer fund, right now.

Congratulations, you've been Joe'd

[frankie]

Welcome to the club. This type of attack is called a Joe Job in geek speak. It's pretty common, especially if you've ever succeeded at getting a spammer booted off his provider. You should visit the SpamCop newsgroups; they are old hands at this and helped me with the same situation in mid-April.

My Joe was also a Javascript encoded porn ad -- it might have been the exact same spammer. Here's a clipping for comparison:

Received: from [195.6.76.211] (195.6.76.211) by amyris.wanadoo.fr; 20 Apr 2001 16:05:27 +0200
Message-ID: 00000b300739$00002642$00001399@62.168.16.146
To: Undisclosed Recipients
From: fuy1@umbc.edu
Subject: Just For You
[...headers abridged...]
html head title HardCore /title
meta http-equiv=3D"Content-Type" content=3D"text/html; charset=3Diso-88= 59-1"
/head
body bgcolor=3D"#FFFFFF"
script
function Merlin( s ) { var sRet=3D""; for(j=3D0; j=3D8364) {n =3D 128;} sRet +=3D String.fromChar= Code( n - 3 ); } return( sRet ); }

The decoder tool at NetDemon revealed that the spam was for lolital.com and visit-x.net. I contacted their hosting providers as well as wanadoo.fr (the open relay) but I don't think anything came of it.

On the bright side, not a single angry recipient wrote back to me to complain. I guess everyone really does delete spam on sight ... or maybe they happily clicked to see HardCore Teens. ;-(

Spammer using your e-mail.

[dana_nutter]

File a criminal complaint and get a lawyer for a big lawsuit. Spamming alone is a misdemeanor offense in CA. Forgery is more serious.

There is a lot of information on these types of subjects at: www.suespammers.org. The discussion list is full of shared information on such cases.