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Beating the Spam Merchants

Posted by timothy on from the boilss-your-heart-cockles dept.

Crowbraid writes: "Well-written column by Margie Boule from the Portland Oregonian about an individual who got tired of getting spam, sued the company for $25 an email, and won." See also Bennett Haselton's anti-spam page, where he has details on "pursuing the anti-spam lawsuits on four separate fronts." (Those lawsuits were mentioned a few months back.)

4 of 177 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Hmmm.... by JoeBuck · · Score: 3, Insightful

    In many cases, spam coming from a Chinese ISP really originates in the US, and is being bounced off of an open email relay.

  2. Is this really a good idea? by HughsOnFirst · · Score: 4, Insightful
    This doesn't sound so good to me.
    Goliath then told the court, Harold says, "that when they get
    unsubscription messages, all their machine reads is the e-mail address. It
    can't read comments. Therefore they had never formed a contract with me,
    because they had never read my messages."

    Did this give Harold pause? "No. It made me angry. Who set up their
    machine, me or them? If they set up their machine to block
    communication, they are solely responsible for all communication that is
    blocked."

    I'm not sure I like the idea of being responsible for mail I don't read.
  3. Re:I would sue, but.... by dvdeug · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And I don't put my e-mail in public places where spammers would look to pick it up. As far as I'm concerned if you get spammed, it's your fault.

    I find it important that people reading my website can respond back to me. I don't see why me providing an email address so they can respond makes me at fault for getting spammed, any more than leaving a car in a parking lot while I shop makes me at fault for it getting stolen.

  4. Re:I would sue, but.... by dvdeug · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Giving a proper email address in a public forum is like posting your phone number on a billboard in times square, and then expecting nobody you don't want to call!

    Posting my phone number on a billboard in times square should be like posting my email on a billboard in time square, not like posting my email on a few limited-interest mailing lists and web pages.

    I don't expect that my email will be limited to those I particularly want to talk to. I do expect that it will be reasonable human beings with an interest in communicating with me. Fradulently titled commercial email that I get 7 copies of (3 email aliases and 4 mailing lists that I'm on) don't count.

    I don't have an option to hide my email address, either. Besides my webpage, I'm a Debian maintainer (creating several publicly known aliases) and a contributer to several email lists with public archives.