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Spammer Fined $2,000 Plus Costs in Washington

Posted by michael on from the to-pay-fine,-click-here dept.

berniecase writes "The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports that Jason Heckel, of Salem, OR, has been ordered (on summary judgment, no less) by King County Superior Court Judge Douglass North to pay $98,000 for sending spam to Washington state residents. Heckel's lawyers say they'll appeal on the basis that Washington's law violates the constitutional protection of interstate commerce."

2 of 244 comments (clear)

  1. Good! by Tar-Palantir · · Score: 5, Interesting

    UCE is bad enough alone, but this jerk was sending spam with bad return addresses and deceptive subject lines. I mean, commercial email with subjects "Did I get the right email address?" to trick the user into opening it? That's just scummy.
    Obviously, this guy got the _wrong_ email address. Go Washington!

  2. Educating Businesses by jvj24601 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    One of the ways to combat spam is to educate businesses who become interested in using spam. One of our clients came to us with a proposal to increase traffic to their website. They discovered that you could "send thousand's of emails for just pennies" (yes, that's a quote from a spammer's ad they read back to us).

    We tried to explain how this doesn't really help generate traffic, and how it generates bad will, and how some states now have laws against unsolicited email.

    The final kicker was to have the following conversation with the company founder.

    Me: "How often do you get spam email?"

    Him: "All the time."

    Me: "Do you read any of it?"

    Him: "No."

    [awkward 15 second silence]

    Him: "I get it.".